Science App Review

I will be using the six D’s of Solution Fluency to help myself with this project.

Define:

To find an application that can help me through one of our grade 9 science units, showcase and describe the app and review it on how much you have learned.

 

Discover:

Questions to answer:

• How do I find a website?
• What unit should I focus on learning?
• How can I review the website I chose?

Dream:

I want to be able to:

• Discover new strategies for learning the subject
• Learn new things that I have never done before

 

Design:

I can find lists of apps by doing a few searches on Google using keywords such as “Science App” “Grade 9” “Educational”. From there I there should be able to start looking through apps and pick one of my choosing.

 

Deliver:

I ended up going with States of Matter: Basics on the website PhET because we used some of the programs on PhET in our science class already and I wanted to see if this would be as good as the apps I have already seen. PhET also kept coming up as one of the top answer for my searches so it seemed like a good choice. The idea of the app is simple, you can see how molecules change their states due changes in temperature.

Here is the game, you may have to download it. It requires Java to run.

 

This is what it should look like when you run the program.

 

There are many different features such as:

Changing the temperature at the bottom of the screen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Changing the type of atom or molecule and changing the state on the right hand side.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can also select phase changes and add more molecules and pressure to it. This also measures the amount of pressure in the diagram.

Conclusion:

This app has many useful features that can be used to further understand the states of matter visually. The app had a great interface that was easy to understand and use After using this app I really can grasp the whole idea perfectly. It also taught me about changes in the pressure which I don’t remember going over in class. I would definitely recommend this app to any teachers or students going over the states of matter.

 

Debrief:

Using these steps made this whole project a lot easier however, I feel as if I could have done better dreaming and discovering by being more creative and less plain. This could have led to a better product in the end with higher expectations in myself.