TouchPhysics - Physics Education Made Fun!

TouchPhysics is a prototype of an educational software for learning physics on a multitouch tabletop. It’s supposed to make learning fun by being playful and intuitive. Students are encouraged to explore how physical properties like weight etc. affect the behavior and motion of objects. For demonstration purposes, we used the classic example of the inclined plane. The application design has the look and feel of a typical desk enhanced by cutting-edge technology which makes for a great user experience.

We developed TouchPhysics for a 47″ multitouch tabletop as part of a university project. Our goal was to show the possibilities of multitouch in the educational space. The Box2D engine helped us to get all the physics right and the $1 Gesture Recognizer provided a great tool to implement the drawing (and recognition) of shapes. Finally, GestureWorks has eased development a great deal by handling all the multitouch events and being fairly easy to implement. We tried another Flash multitouch framework at first but GW is definitely the better choice!

– Jürgen and Andrea