Tales of Lost Labs: What Happened to Ramp and Roll?
To listen to this episode, download the mp3 directly, find us on iTunes, or use the player below.
Have you ever relied upon a lab or resource so much that you don’t know what you would do without it? This mini-lab episode discusses such a tool that was lost and then found again – Mihara Naoki’s Ramp and Roll.
Originally developed in 1995 to assist introductory physics students understand the simple motion of ball rolling on a ramp, Ramp and Roll’s unique user-friendly interface calculates and graphs the position, velocity and acceleration of the ball all in real time while the ball is rolling. Listen to this mini-lab episode to hear more about Ramp and Roll as Dale takes a trip down memory lane to share how it was lost, found and eventually came to be hosted at Lab Out Loud.
Link: Ramp and Roll
If you have used Ramp and Roll, please leave a thank you note as a comment for Mihara Naoki. And if you have any Lost Lab ideas like this one, please reach out to Lab Out Loud through our contact page or tweet to us at @laboutloud.
Lab Out Loud is now available for streaming on Google Play Music!
Do you like the show? Please leave a comment on iTunes and rate us! And don’t forget to subscribe.
Thank you, Naoki-san, for your creation and development of Ramp n Roll. I have used it, and Graphs and Tracks, with my high school Modeling Physics classes for nearly twenty years, to great effect! I was thrilled to see the application hosted on Lab Out Loud, where it will remain an important tool in developing students’ conceptual understanding of graphical kinematics for another generation of teachers.
I loved this for years and used it in my classroom. However, we are unable to use it any longer (Java). Here is a decent alternative I’ve used. http://www.physicsclassroom.com/Physics-Interactives/1-D-Kinematics/Graphs-and-Ramps/Graphs-and-Ramps-Interactive