Scientific Classics

The end of the year has arrived for the Gizmo coders! During 2006 the two main goals were 1) to update the important "Classic" science Gizmos, and to build new Gizmos to broaden our collection in the sciences.

The Classic Gizmos were created many years ago (some as far back as 1997). Several that we updated include: Shoot The Monkey, Inclined Plane, Density Lab, Air Track, and Doppler Shift. Several screen shots comparing the Classic Gizmo to the modernized Gizmos are shown below. Needless to say, we are excited about the new and improved versions. Besides just the graphical enhancement, a tremendous amount of work went in to improving the overall user friendliness and the feature set of each Gizmo.

Our other goal was to increase our coverage in the sciences. Several of our new Gizmos include Phase Change, Pulley, Refraction, Star Spectra, Evolution: Natural and Artificial Selection, RNA and Protein Synthesis, and Orbital Motion - Kepler's Laws.

All in all we modernized 20 Gizmos, and created 22 new Gizmos. It has been a very busy year and we are looking forward to creating a wealth of new Gizmos next year. We always hope you are finding the Gizmos a great benefit to your teaching. We love getting feedback from teachers so that we can continue to make improvements to current Gizmos, as well as make new Gizmos from your ideas.

We are looking forward to an exciting 2007, and we hope you are as well. See you then.