Available Languages: English, Spanish, Greek, Portuguese, Chinese

This interactive game allows users to study motion in two dimensions. A particle's movement is controlled by varying its position, velocity, or acceleration in both direction and magnitude. Only one of the three variables can be controlled at a time. This allows users to see how each are related and affect movement individually. To provide further interest, each variable can be used to attempt to navigate the particle around different complexities of barriers in both timed and untimed modes.

This simulation is part of a large and growing collection. It has been designed using principles from physics education research and refined based on student interviews.
SEE RELATED MATERIALS BELOW: for links to concept questions designed by the PhET team specifically to accompany this simulation.

Please note that this resource requires Java.