Running in the rain: using a shared simulation to solve open-ended physics problems

The five ways of using computer simulations for students learning physics are for `hypothetical' experiments, for `breaking' the laws of nature, for `tidy' experiments, for `instrumental' data capture and display and for direct mathematical `modelling'. This article describes a distributed computer simulation running on linked workstations and reports on students' attempts at solving the `running in the rain' problem. The simulation of the problem is implemented in SharedARK, a prototype technology for allowing students to work together at a distance from each other.