What is Interactive Physics Software ?

Interactive Physics helps students visualize and learn abstract concepts. It also lets you and your students alter the physical properties of the simulation environment, and view changes in important measurements while the simulation runs.

If you can use a mouse, you can use Interactive Physics. There is no programming required.

• Create objects by drawing circles, blocks, and polygons
• Measure velocity, acceleration, force, momentum, energy, etc., in metric or English units
• Create ropes, springs, dampers, pulleys, slots, linear actuators, and rotational motors
• Hear and measure sound volumes, sound frequencies, and Doppler effects
• Vary air resistance, gravity, or material properties
• Create visually appealing presentations by attaching graphics to objects
• View results as numbers, graphs, and animated vectors

Interactive Physics is a powerful tool for discovery learning. It develops inquiry skills and physics knowledge by allowing the user to vary nearly any physical parameter (e.g., gravity, force, speed, spring constants) and to measure its effect on nearly any measurable quantity (e.g., position, torque, decibel level).

What parents are saying

“Our 8 year-old son, Nate, loves Interactive Physics because he can build rockets, people, buildings, cars and bikes, and magic inventions and make them do incredible things. His creations can fly, assemble and disassemble, spin, roll, tumble, shoot into space -- you name it... As a matter of fact, every morning before school, a whole group of 8 year-old second graders get together to play with Interactive Physics. They have no idea they’re learning -- to them it’s just a lot of fun.”

Norris & Catherine Chumley
New York City

Ideal for home schoolers

Interactive Physics offers a complete, flexible physics curriculum tailored to the unique needs of each student. Fast-paced, interactive simulations are coupled with activity sheets to expand your child’s imagination while stimulating his or her inquisitive curiosity. Interactive Physics makes learning mathematics and physics fun!

Interactive Physics works for all levels.

Students at all levels love Interactive Physics. Whether you are studying physical sciences in middle school or taking advanced physics courses in high school or college, Interactive Physics is a fun, exciting way to explore physics.

Finding physics difficult?

Sometimes the most difficult part of physics is understanding the maze of equations in the textbook. Interactive Physics makes sense of the math and lets you visualize and interact with otherwise difficult concepts.

Move beyond a topic.

Interactive Physics allows you to explore physics on a more meaningful level than can be taught on paper or at the chalkboard. You can study what-if scenarios and create nearly any simulation imaginable. Have fun experimenting and inventing new machines, environments, and models.

From inquiry learning in middle school to discovering new physics concepts in college, Interactive Physics allows your students to become professional scientists.

Interactive Physics in the classroom

Motivate your students with Interactive Physics. Select from a wide range of ready-to-run experiments and provide exciting in-class demonstrations, while saving on lesson-preparation time. Interactive Physics is easily integrated into any physics curriculum, and correlates with National and State Education Standards and Objectives.

Students appreciate instructors who use Interactive Physics

Make textbook concepts come to life in front of your students’ eyes. There are 150+ ready-to-run simulations that supplement your physics curriculum. Run, alter the experiment conditions, and then re-run the simulation until your students fully understand the concepts.

Interactive Physics Training For Teachers

We also provide Interactive Physics Training. For information about training for Interactive Physics, click here.

Reviews and Awards

"It is one of the most useful programs for advanced mathematics teaching I have seen for some time."
- Times Educational Supplement, Jan 2003

Interactive Physics “promises to be the one used by most physics instructors... I’ve used it to make some of my standard simulations, and I find that the new editing tools make it quick to create the desired simulation.”
Physics Communicator, Summer 1996

“The real-time, editable physical models in [Interactive Physics] would have been available only on workstations just a few years ago. The interface is admirably Mac-like, with a tools palette immediately comprehensible to anyone who’s worked with any Mac graphics program. We were making worlds of bouncing balls and cannon shots within minutes. Despite the simplicity of the interface though, Interactive physics can be used to create terribly sophisticated sims with powerful data input and export. Overall, this is an outstanding package... with an excellent Apple Guide help system and tutorial. Interactive Physics plus a textbook could be a viable education in itself... Wish I’d had this in high school.”
MacAddict Magazine, January 1997

“The new version also has more tools, including a new curved-polygon body type and Join/Split and Object Snap features that help you build complex mechanisms. It’s now easier to draw curved slots for mechanisms, and you can adjust most physical parameters with sliders. Not only can you set up and recall data for simulations from Microsoft Excel, but Interactive Physics can now access and run external scripts. With Interactive Physics, ... shows us how good instructional software can be. It doesn’t replace a real physics lab and a good teacher... but it’s a great companion.”
Macworld Magazine, March 1997

“Interactive Physics (IP) is the best known, most commonly used graphical-modeling program for an extremely wide variety of physical situations. IP has had more influence on the teaching of physics than any other modeling program. At least seven general physics texts include IP simulations in the ancillary materials, and at least two complete workshops from major publishers feature this program. Despite it’s occasional idiosyncrasies, I find it to be an efficient tool for preparing and presenting simulations that are effective and readily modified in the classroom; for testing, sharpening, and often correcting one’s intuition; and simply for casual explorations.”
Computers in Physics, May/June 1997

According to the ScienceMan, “Interactive Physics is a great product - if you don’t own and you teach physics, you definitely should buy it...Is this just software that moves balls around a screen? Heck, no! Build and dismantle machines, change properties of objects, construct interactive physics games, measure simulations numerically and graphically, even import your own class selected spreadsheet data - the possibilites are endless! My students have constructed fascinating gravity and momentum demonstrations that are so I good I use them in presentations to other teachers!”
Entire Review