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Contents
- Introduction
- Users
- Edit mode
- Chapters, sections and pages
- A typical page
- The simulation panel
- The tool bar
- Hot properties
- The text panel
- The graph panel
- Unavailable features
- The Investigations chapter
- Questions and assessment
- The question window
- Assessment
- Equation tool
- Equation manipulation
- Equation evaluation and plotting
- Opening, saving and inserting equations
- Feedback
Introduction
Users
Each e-book (e.g. Mechanics or Properties of Matter) contains many interactive questions and keeps a record of all answers that have been entered. If you want to keep this record of answers separate from other peoples' answers then you need to log in with your own Username and Password. New users can only be created in Edit mode. You can use the User name item under the File menu to change to a different username at any time.
When you open an e-book (e.g. Mechanics or Properties of Matter) you will either automatically become the Default user or if other users exist, you will be prompted to enter a username by the window below:
Chapters, sections and pages
The contents page is shown below:
Edit mode
The software can be used in either edit or non-edit mode by toggling the Edit mode item under the File menu. Edit mode is for altering content and creating users, and so is password protected and is not intended for use by a student. The software will always start in non-edit mode.This help document deals only with non-edit mode.A typical page
Pages can have a variety of appearances, but the vast majority of them have the layout shown in the screen shot below:
| Top | The tool bar. |
| Below tool bar | The simulation. |
| Bottom left | The text panel. |
| Bottom right | The graphics panel. |
The simulation panel
This panel contains a simulation or one or more objects obeying the laws of physics. You can move an object by clicking on it and dragging it to the desired location. Double clicking or right clicking on an object will bring up a pop-up menu similar to this one:
Selecting the properties item will open a window with the properties of the object (in this case the aircraft) and allow you to view and edit its position, velocity, mass, radius and colour or image etc. The properties window also has buttons allowing you to delete an object or to centre the view on it.
Draw velocity allows you to draw a velocity vector by moving the mouse and clicking where you want the velocity vector to end. By default, the length of a velocity vector is equal to the distance the object would move in one second if no force were acting on it.
Add a force allows you to add a new force vector by moving the mouse and clicking where you want the new force vector to end. An object can have any number of forces.
The items Send to back and Bring to front allow you to place objects in front of or behind each other, so that, for example, you can choose whether the plane flies in front of or behind the conning tower of the aircraft carrier.
Double clicking or right clicking on the background (usually the sky) brings up the following popup menu:
Show object browser brings up a window listing all objects in the simulation. Clicking on the name of an object will open its properties window - this is useful if you have 'lost' an object off the screen when changing the view or zooming in or out.
Show world properties brings up a window with simulation display options
Copy to clipboard copies the entire simulation panel onto the system clipboard as an image - once you have done this you can go to your favourite word processor or image editor and paste in the image.
The Show scale option allows you to choose whether or not the length scale in the bottom left corner is shown.
The tool bar
You can change the zoom with the "magnifying glass" buttons at the left of the tool bar. The + button zooms in, the - button zooms out and the button in the middle resets the zoom to its original position. You can change the zoom more rapidly using the Zoom slider to right of the zoom buttons. Hovering the mouse over the slider will tell you the width of the simulation panel's view in metres.
The Start button starts the simulation running and then becomes the Pause button.
Reset will reset the simulation window to its initial conditions and reset the data plotted on the graph. Reset will not reset the graph axes. If you want the graphs returned to the state they were in when you entered the page then select Page reset from the File menu.
The Start and Reset buttons may sometimes be disabled until you have completed one or more questions in the text panel. This will be made clear in a message at the top of the text panel.
The Time scale is to the right of zoom slider. It is a pull-down box which usually reads time x 1. This tells you that simulation will run in real time: one second of the simulation represents one second of real time. You can slow the simulation down or speed it up by selecting another item in the pull-down box.
Hot properties
A hot property allows the user to experiment with a physical property that is of particular interest on the current page. A hot property is shown as a semi-transparent red shaded label below an object. In the following example the x-component of the aircraft's velocity is a hot property:
The text panel
The text panel displays text, equations, questions and page references. All text panels support the usual edit operations: copy, cut and paste. The paste operation will of course only work if the text panel is editable (i.e. you can type text into it). The edit operations also allow you to transfer text to any other text processing software on your system, though text formatting may be lost in the process. Copy, cut and paste can be selected from the Edit menu or can be invoked using the usual keys:| Copy | Control-C |
| Cut | Control-X |
| Paste | Control-V |
Equations that appear with an equation icon 
next to them (such as
v = u + at
in the screen shot above.) are interactive. Clicking on the equation icon allows you to evaluate, plot or open in equation tool. Double clicking or right clicking on an
equation allows you to copy, evaluate or plot the equation, or open in
equation tool (see the Equation tool section for more details).
Questions appear as little icons like this 
and have tool-tips that tell you the subject of the question and the
number of attempts that have been made at answering it. You can open
the question by clicking on the icon (see the Questions and assessment
section for more detail). Page references are denoted by the icon 
and when clicked take you to another page. The page icon's tool-tip tells you the name of the destination page. You can return to the original page by clicking the BACK at the bottom right of the window.
The graph panel
The graph panel is usually used to plot data from an equation or data from the simulation, though it can be also used to display an image. In this section we will explain how data is plotted from the simulation. Graphing equations will be explained in the Equation tool section.
Clicking on the vertical (Y) axis label brings up this window:
Looking from left to right, the first box allows you to choose objects from different simulations, e.g., Mechanics. The Clear button allows you to unselect all the yellow-highlighted items so that nothing will be graphed. The first list allows you to select the objects (e.g. the aircraft) and the second list allows you to select which property you would like to be graphed (e.g. the x component of velocity). You can only select one property in the second list but you can graph data for more than one object by selecting several objects in the first list. To select several objects keep the ctrl key on your keyboard pressed down as you select the items. You can return the graph to its initial state at any time by going to the File in the menu bar and selecting Page reset.
Clicking on the horizontal (X) axis label brings up a similar window, the two differences are that Time is now an option for selection and that only one selection can be made from the final list.
The graph's popup menu can be displayed either by double or right clicking on the graph:
Selecting View table from the popup menu will open a window with the graph's data displayed in a table. If you select entries in the table by dragging the mouse across them, you can use Ctrl-C (press the ctrl and C keys together) to copy the selected data. You will then be able to paste it into a word processor or a spreadsheet.
Copy to clipboard copies an image of the graph to the system's clipboard so that you can paste it into some other software, such as a word processor or an image editor.
Numeric mode allows you to view the (X) axis and (Y) axis data values instead of viewing them graphically.
This graph only toggles whether only this graph is shown or both graphs are shown, useful if you want to enlarge one of the graphs.
Left clicking anywhere on a graph will place a graph marker - a little red blob with a cross through the middle of it. The precise co-ordinates of the centre of the cross are printed next to it. Double clicking on the graph marker brings up a window which allows you to edit its values. Graph markers can be removed simply by clicking on them. Graph markers are saved when leaving the page so that they will still be there when the user returns to the page. Note: graph markers are saved separately for each user.
Unavailable features
There are pages where some of the features described above are unavailable. This is usually when a feature would allow a student to 'cheat' at answering a question. For example, if a question asks "Calculate the final speed of the aircraft", the student shouldn't be able to answer the question by running the simulation and looking at the answer! For this reason the Start button can be disabled until certain questions are answered. For similar reasons, it is also possible that students will be prevented from opening the object properties window or editing the sources for the graph. When features are disabled it will be made clear to the student in the text and a message dialog will appear reminding the student if they do try to use the disabled feature.The Investigations chapter
The Investigations chapter's pages differ in several ways from the typical page described above. The differences are geared towards giving the student a more flexible and realistic environment to experiment within.
The most obvious difference is that the simulation panel takes up the entire page. The text and graph panels can be displayed by pressing the Show notes and Show graphs buttons just below the simulation panel. The user can arrange and resize them to suit the task at hand.
The second difference is that there is no explicit teaching; it is assumed that the student has at least some familiarity with the topic being discussed. In a page of a typical Investigations chapter a task is presented to the student, for example to calculate the acceleration during a rocket launch. The student has to use his or her knowledge and the simulation tools to perform the task. The student can gauge how well they have performed the task by answering the questions at the end of the text.
The third important difference in the Investigations chapter is that errors can be present in both the readings of the graphs (including the graph numeric mode). These errors cannot be altered by the student - the student is forced to accept the presence of errors and assess their impact on the results of the experiment. When errors are present it is usual that other ways of getting at the object's data are disabled. For example, students can be prevented from opening the object properties window.
Questions and assessment
The question window
A typical question window is shown below
The question is displayed at the top of the
window and the student can enter the answer (in the above example "4.00
m") in the box in the middle. The Attempt number shows the number of attempts that have been made on the question so far. Pressing the page button 
will return the book to the page which the question is on - useful if
you need to browse to other pages to answer the question. The lower
space is for displaying feedback in response to a student's answer.
A question is said to be completed when the question has been answered correctly or three wrong answers have been given. Questions that have been completed will have their icons in the text panel greyed-out. Once a question has been completed, the Attempt number box transforms into a Show model answer button which, when pressed, will show the correct answer and any working needed to obtain it.
The student can view the Marking scheme, which explains how points are awarded, either from the Help menu or by clicking on the progress bar at the bottom-left of the main window. Points are awarded and added to the student's score (see the Assessment section below) if the student gets the correct answer in one of their first three attempts:
| First attempt | 3 points |
| Second attempt | 2 points |
| Third attempt | 1 point |
| Further attempts | 0 points |
Answers are recorded until the question is completed. Answers can be recalled at any time by using the drop down button to the right of answer input box. If previously entered answers are re-entered, either by typing or from the drop down box, they will still give feedback, but will not be added to the history again. Once the question is completed the student is free to enter answers and see the feedback, but those answers won't be recorded and no points will be awarded.
Assessment
Information on incorrect answers is stored in the Answer log, which can be viewed by the selecting the Answer log item from the Tools menu. A typical answer log window is shown below:
The log gives the number of questions completed, the current score (out of the maximum possible score) and the most common error. The main part of log is the table of incorrect answers organised by error category. Each question icon in the table represents an incorrect answer entered by the student and the colour indicates the attempt number:
| First attempt | green |
| Second attempt | yellow |
| Third attempt | red |
Clicking on a question icon will bring up the question window containing the answer, its question and the appropriate feedback.
Note: The answer log can only be cleared in edit mode.Equation tool
The Equation tool allows you to
re-arrange, graph and perform calculations with equations. The Equation tool can be started from the main window by selecting Equation tool from the Tools menu. It can also be launched by clicking on the
button that appears next to equations. A typical Equation tool window is shown below
The Tool bar, located underneath the menu bar, allows you to perform a variety of operations on an equation, and will described in more detail later. Notice that although only one equation is displayed at any time you can quickly flick between several equations using the tabs just below the tool bar. You may have as many equations as you like opened at any one time.
A new equation can be created using the New item in the Equation tool's File menu. You can select Equation chooser which will open a window asking you to select an equation from a list. All variables appearing in an equation have default values that are displayed in the tooltips when the mouse pointer passes over the variable. These default values are used for evaluating and graphing equations.
If an equation is arranged so that there is only one variable on the left hand side with no power, then that variable is the dependent variable and is coloured yellow. A message will appear at the top right of the window when a dependent variable is set. We call it 'dependent' because its value depends on the values of the variables on the right hand side of the equation. The dependent variable's value will be used to supply data for the vertical (Y) axis of the equation's graph. Before you can plot such a graph an independent variable must be set. You can set the independent variable by double-clicking on a term. The independent variable is coloured red and will be used to provide the data for the horizontal (X) axis of the graph.
Equation manipulation
The equation in the screenshot below has been manipulated by a number of operations:
You can re-arrange equations by using the buttons in the tool bar. The tool bar can be grabbed and dragged to any convenient location by clicking on the grey, dotted box at its left end.
To use the add, subtract, multiply or divide operations, a term must first be selected by clicking on it. Selected terms are highlighted in green. Once a term is selected, simply click on the operation you want to perform and the operation will be performed with the selected term on both sides of the equation. So, for example, if you select a and click the divide button, then both sides of the equation will be divided by a.
Other operations on the tool bar do not require a selected term. For example, 'swap sides', denoted by 
interchanges the left and right sides of the equation. Also 
squares both sides of the equation,
takes the square root of both sides of the equation,
cubes both sides of the equation,
takes the cube root of both sides of the equation,
takes the inverse of both sides of the equation and
multiplies both sides of the equation by -1.
All operations that appear on the toolbar can be undone and redone by selecting the 
and 
icons respectively. Undo and redo can also be selected from the Edit menu. The Clear history item in the Edit menu will clear the memory of all the possible 'undos' and 'redos'.
If you want the undo/redo history to be saved with a particular equation, make sure Undo log saved with equation is selected on the Tools menu.
If you hover the mouse over a variable, its name, value and units will be displayed. To set the value of a variable, right click on the variable to bring up its popup menu and select the Set ... value item, where "..." is the name of the variable. To edit its units and other properties you can select the View/edit term details item from the popup menu.
In working with equations on paper it is common to miss out constant terms that are zero. For example, if the initial velocity is zero (u = 0) then you might write v = at rather than v = u + at. You can do the same thing with equations in the Equation tool by first setting the default value of a term to zero and then selecting Hide zero terms in the Tools menu.
To substitute between equations, make the variable to be substituted from one equation into another the dependent variable in both equations and then select substitute from the Edit menu whilst either one of the equations is displayed. This creates a new equation in the Equation tool which will have the tab label "substitution". This new equation can be treated in the same way as any other equation.
Equation evaluation and plotting
The Evaluate item in the Tools menu will open a small window that allows you to calculate the dependent variable's value. You can only evaluate an equation if two conditions are satisfied: 1) it has a dependent variable (a single term on the left hand side of the equals sign) and 2) an independent variable has been selected. A typical evaluation window is shown below:
button. A typical plot window is shown below:
Opening, saving and inserting equations
Equations can be loaded and saved using Open and Save in the File menu. You may load and save equations from any directory, but it's best to keep your equations in the default directory that is used by the Open and Save windows.Feedback
To provide us with feedback on what you think can be improved in the software please email us at
