To mark National Coding Week, we’ve invited physics educator, Dr Dan Jones, to share his experience of using AI and coding in the physics classroom, as well as some of the resources he’s created.
Last November I started making HTML simulations and apps for use in my Physics lessons, using AI. My intention was to create resources for topic areas where I felt there was nothing suitable already online. Each one initially took an evening to make and I was pleased if I got an output that vaguely resembled my aim. Ten months on there are now over 100 apps on my site and they cover a wide range of topics, with some aimed at students and some hopefully useful for teachers.
I am not a coder but after inputting as thorough a prompt as I can, I then check the physics of the output and refine with further prompts. A typical app now takes about an hour and the difference in complexity that is possible now, compared with last year, is considerable.
Examples of this would be recent apps on A-Level required practicals, found here, here and here. Every student is given their own wire, their own micrometer complete with its own hidden zero error, and their own set of meter readings. They take the measurements, plot the graph, add error bars, draw the best and worst acceptable lines and justify a gradient. The app marks it, out of 27 for the resistivity practical, and carries errors forward, so a student who misreads the micrometer at the start is not penalised repeatedly for the same slip. Three of them are finished so far, covering resistivity, the Young modulus and internal resistance, with a micrometer, a vernier and analogue meters between them. They are not a substitute for the laboratory, but could be useful when there is not enough apparatus to go round, for revision, or when a class needs a second attempt at the analysis.
Uncertainty and graphing work is heavily assessed and rarely practised on its own, so there is now a toolkit for exactly that, tailored to each of the English and Welsh exam boards. There is a circuit explorer with proper exam symbols and a stack of ready-made exam-style circuits. There is an equation rearranging app that teaches balancing and inverse operations rather than the formula triangle and full interactive revision pages for whole specification topics.
Two of the tools are aimed at teachers rather than at the students, because planning time is the thing we have least of. The worksheet generator produces unique physics worksheets from KS2 to A level, together with a mark scheme. The resource finder holds thousands of teaching ideas sorted by topic and key stage, which I hope is useful when planning to teach a new topic, to looking to refresh an existing one.
Care must be taken when using AI. It can often produce physics that is subtly wrong, diagrams that are electrically impossible and content that is off specification, all with complete confidence. Every app I publish has been checked by hand and I welcome feedback from users to improve these resources further.
Everything is free at drjonesphysics.com. If you try one and it is not quite right for your class, please tell me and I will endeavour to tailor it to your needs.
Thank you to Dan for sharing his experience with us for National Coding Week.
You can explore Dan’s free resources at Dr Jones’ Physics.
For more ideas and support for teaching physics, explore the resources available from Physics Partners and find out more about how we support physics teachers and schools.
