Pressure in a liquid: depth and density sim
Lower a pressure probe into water, salt water or cooking oil, correct the meter's zero, turn the probe and change the vessel, then plot p against h and work out ρ from the gradient; a can with holes shows the deepest jet spurting hardest.
Pressure · covers the O-Level, IGCSE, GCSE topic
Use it in your lessons
- Try it here: anyone can unlock 2 figures free, and a free account unlocks up to 5. Runs on a laptop, a Chromebook or a phone; nothing to install.
- Present it and share student links with the teacher plan, from US$5 a month, billed yearly.
- Put it on your own website or LMS for US$9, paid once, or every sim from US$29 a month.
Free guide: 12 practicals as sims, and how to run one in a lesson →
Need a version for your exact set-up? Have one made: US$49 a figure in an order of 5.
More physics sims
- Potential divider and potentiometer simDrag the sliding contact of a real slide rheostat used as a potentiometer (or choose R1 and R2 on a two-resistor board), measure V_in and V_out with a digital voltmeter, record V_out against the contact's position in an empty table, see your own points make a straight best-fit line through the origin, and check V_out = V_in × R2 ÷ (R1 + R2) against your readings; a load across the output (beyond the syllabus) bends the line.
- Thermal expansion simHeat a brass ball until it sticks in a ring and heat the ring until it drops through, watch a bimetallic strip bend away from a contact and switch a lamp like a thermostat, then warm water and air side by side in a water bath and see the gas expand far more than the liquid.
- Ultrasound: sonar and scanning simSail a model ship over a sea bed in a water tank, send ultrasound pulses and read the echo times on an oscilloscope to map the depth with d = v t ÷ 2; then slide a probe over a gel block to get echoes from every boundary inside (and none without gel), and over a steel bar to find a hidden crack.
- Using ammeters and voltmeters simDrag the meters' plugs onto a real bench circuit: put the ammeter in series and the voltmeter across the lamp, red to +, see what really happens when they are wired wrongly (a blown fuse, a dark lamp), pick the range, read the needle to half a division looking straight on, correct a zero error, compare a digital display, and work out the lamp's resistance from your own readings.
- Wiring a mains plug simDrag the brown, blue and green-and-yellow cores onto the terminals of a real three-pin plug seen from the back, tighten the screws, choose the strip length, work out I = P ÷ V and fit the right fuse, clamp the cable grip on the sheath, then run the checks, which name every fault, why it matters and what it would do, and see what earthing does when a live wire touches the metal case.
- Hooke's law simLoad 50 g masses onto a spring and watch it stretch the same 12.3 mm every time.