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Introduction

Overview
The following objectives appear to be essential for the development of future-oriented and promising teaching / learning materials:

• Supporting the self-activity of students
• Stimulating students to take on responsibility for their own learning process
• Facilitation of learning opportunities at any place and at any time
• Making use of the didactic potential of modern media to optimize the presentation of complex learning content
• Avoiding a teaching style, primarily oriented to equations and formulas

One way of achieving these objectives can be demonstrated with the example of a course on "Introduction to Classical Mechanics".
An important component of this course material is a simulation program, called JavaXYZ, with a versatile user interface that encourages exploration and research-oriented learning
The developed course material is available both in PDF format and in HTML format. It represents a mixture of traditional learning texts and prepared simulations.
The skills required for changing parameters inside the user interface are explained step by step inside the learning text.

Thematic scope of the program JavaXYZ:

The basic elements of the program are individual mass points, which can be arranged in any order inside a given cube. Their interaction can be adjusted individually. This cube can be rotated around two axes, arranged vertically to each other, so that the respective assembly can be viewed from different perspectives. The following list of forces indicate what kind of interaction between the particles can be simulated.

• Contact forces (from complete elastic to complete inelastic)
• Spring forces
• Gravitational forces (mutual and externally)
  
• Coulomb forces
(mutual and extern)

• Friction forces

Furthermore, for each mass point, the following parameters can be set individually:

• Local coordinats
• Velocity coordinats
• Shape
• Mass
• Charge
• Elasticity factor

During the running simulation the respective velocity and acceleration can be displayed as vector for each particle.
The following (non-exhaustive) list gives an overview of possible issues that can be treated with support of JavaXYZ:

Kinematics Newtons Axioms Transmission of waves Hooks law Law of gravity Elastic and inelastic collision Conservation of momentum

Harmonic Oscillator Pendulum motion Scattering experiments Center of mass Charge and electric field Equipotential surface

In respect to these topics a number of prepared simulations are added to demonstrate the range of possible applications. These examples have been produce inside the user interface with mouse commands without any further programming. They can at any time be extended or modified by the user.

Note about programing

The program JavaXYZ is written in Java and is based on the experience that was gathered with the original UNIX program xyZET.
Programing: Dr. Sasa Divjak, University Ljubljana

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