Deployment of physics simulation apps using Easy JavaScript Simulations

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new feature in Easy JavaScript Simulations that enables educators to easily deploy physics simulations as mobile apps on iOS and Android devices, simplifying the process of app creation.

Contribution

The paper presents an innovative integration of Ionic/Cordova and AngularJS into EjsS, allowing educators to generate mobile physics simulation apps without extensive programming.

Findings

Successful creation of physics apps for iOS and Android using EjsS

Demonstration of several working examples based on Open Source Physics Singapore

Simplification of mobile app deployment for physics simulations

Abstract

Physics simulations are widely used to improve the learning process in science and engineering education. Deployment of a computational physics simulation/model is extremely complex given the fact that both knowledge and skills for the science equations and the computational and programming aspects are required for a fully functional simulation, typically requiring a science educator and computer scientists/developer to work together. However, when using Easy JavaScript Simulation (EjsS) modeling toolkit, the instructor can be both the science educator and computer programmer, only needing to define the simulation variables, model and view, and the modeling toolkit can generate the computer codes for the physics simulation. Moreover, the programming aspects can become even more complex if simulations require being optimized for both Android and iOS mobile devices. The current version of EjsS provides instructors with an authoring tool that includes facilities for the creation of such JavaScript simulations as mobile apps, thus simplifying the purely programming aspects. This paper presents a new and novel EjsS functionality to generate physics simulation apps for iOS and Android. The generation process is based on the integration of the Ionic/Cordova and AngularJS technologies into EjsS. Finally, we present several working examples based on the works of Open Source Physics at Singapore.