Interactive Excel simulations for exploring physics concepts — collected from various sources, some home-made. Open in Excel or Google Sheets and adjust the parameters to see the physics respond in real time.
Mechanics & Motion
Stopping Distances
xlsx
Models thinking distance, braking distance, and total stopping distance as a function of speed. Good for exploring the non-linear relationship between speed and stopping distance and the effect of reaction time.
Simulates a falling parachutist with adjustable mass, drag coefficient, and canopy area. Shows the approach to terminal velocity and the step-change when the parachute deploys.
Models the kinetic and potential energy of a mass on a spring through a full oscillation cycle. Useful for visualising energy exchange in SHM and verifying conservation of energy.
Generates displacement–time curves for underdamped, critically damped, and overdamped systems. Adjustable damping constant lets students compare regimes and see how energy is lost per cycle.
Models Newton's law of cooling with adjustable initial temperature, ambient temperature, and cooling constant. Good for comparing insulated and uninsulated objects and fitting to real calorimetry data.
Simulates the magnetic field strength of a solenoid as the number of turns and current are varied. Useful for exploring the relationship B ∝ nI and the effect of a ferromagnetic core.
Models exponential radioactive decay with adjustable decay constant. Plots both N vs t and ln(N) vs t so students can extract the half-life graphically and confirm the exponential relationship.
A spreadsheet analogue of the classic dice experiment — each row represents a "throw" that removes a fixed fraction of remaining nuclei. Demonstrates how random individual events produce smooth exponential decay in aggregate.
Simulates a chain of radioactive decays (parent → daughter → granddaughter), showing how each nuclide's activity grows and falls over time. Useful for discussing secular equilibrium and decay chains like uranium-238.
Charts showing the sources and proportions of background radiation exposure. Good for contextualising dose and discussing natural vs artificial sources in a radiation hazard lesson.
Real UK population data on annual radiation doses broken down by source. Useful for quantitative discussions of risk, dose, and the relative contributions of radon, medical, cosmic, and food sources.
Plots binding energy per nucleon against mass number for a wide range of nuclides. Annotates key features — iron-56 peak, light nuclides suitable for fusion, heavy nuclides suitable for fission.
A more comprehensive version of the binding energy dataset with additional nuclides and a fuller range of mass numbers. Useful for more detailed analysis or comparing specific isotopes.
Signal intensity data from a radio telescope observation. Students can process the data to reconstruct a basic image or intensity map, linking to resolution, wavelength, and the principles of aperture synthesis.