Graph skills bench: scales, best-fit line, gradient and intercept sim
Take your own readings from a spring, a resistance wire, a pendulum, a trolley or cooling water, then draw the graph yourself: choose the axes, labels and scales, plot each point to half a small square, circle the anomaly, lay a best-fit line or a tangent, draw a large gradient triangle and read off the gradient with its unit and the intercept.
Physical quantities, units and measurement · covers the O-Level, IGCSE, GCSE topic
What the sim shows
Model: spring x = F ÷ k with k = 0.25 N/cm (g = 10 N/kg); wire R = 0.0831 Ω/cm × l + 0.25 Ω from the clips, I = 1.5 V ÷ (R + 2.0 Ω); pendulum T = 2π√(l ÷ g) (beyond the syllabus); trolley v = 0.12 + 0.3 t (m/s); water θ = 25 + 54 e^(−t ÷ 12 min) (beyond the syllabus). Readings carry a chosen random scatter, and one in each experiment is spoiled on purpose. Graph paper: 10 by 8 big squares of 2 cm, each of 10 by 10 small squares of 2 mm. Idealised: an exact spring law, a wire at constant temperature, a steady swing, uniform acceleration, one smooth cooling curve.
- The part you change or read in this experiment
- Retort stands, rules, ramp, meters, stopwatches, beaker
Use it in your lessons
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More physics sims
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- Charge flow and current simClose the switch on a real series loop and watch the lamp light at once while every ammeter reads the same; drag a magnifier over any lead to see the electrons drift from − to + against the conventional current, time a run, work out Q = I × t yourself (✗ reasons for mA and ms) and check it against a coulomb counter.
- Combining resistors simDrag real resistors into the clips of a resistance board to wire them in series or in parallel, measure V and I with real digital meters, work out R = V ÷ I from your own readings and check it against the series and parallel formulas, and see that adding a parallel branch lowers the total while adding in series raises it.
- Efficiency: a motor lifting a load simSet the supply's voltage and the load, then time a small geared motor winding a slotted-mass load up beside a half-metre rule: read the energy in from a joulemeter (or V × I × t), work out the useful energy m g Δh and the efficiency, watch a Sankey diagram of where the energy went draw itself, and plot how the efficiency changes with the load.
- Electric field patterns simSwitch on an EHT supply joined to electrodes in a dish of castor oil and watch semolina grains line up into the field pattern of a point, a charged sphere, two points or two parallel plates; drag the electrodes, show field lines running from + to −, and drop in a small + or − test charge to see the force on it.
- Energy resources: power a town simDrag the faders on a model town's control desk to switch on coal, gas, nuclear, biofuel, geothermal, hydroelectric, wind, solar and tidal power, change the wind, the sky and the hour, and see hour by hour whether the supply meets the town's demand, with scores for hours met, CO₂, renewables and rough cost; save your mixes to a table and sort the resources by renewable, from the Sun and available at any hour.