“Adding real educational value to the science lab ”

Welcome to the world of Virtual Experiments

Virtual Experiments are multi-dimensional nonlinear movies of real experiments that are web-delivered in your ordinary browser. The user has full control of various experimental parameters so that he or she can carry out the experiment on their PC just as if they were remotely controlling the real experiment. VEs are not simulations. There is no physics or other science coded into a VE, and whatever science may be discovered in the real experiment can also be discovered in the VE, -- in some cases even science that even we can't wholly explain.

Virtual Experiments are not intended to replace the real hands-on laboratory -- science students need to develop the skills of setting up, alignment and adjustment with real equipment -- but they can offer huge added value as warm-ups to the real thing, or when equipment is scarce, dangerous or expensive. They also offer simultaneous whole-class access 24/7, they can be repeated as often as you like, and you can't break them.

Click on the 'Experiments' link at the top of this page to sample a VE.

How Science Works

Teaching Peer Review for GCSE

If you are interested in teaching science to key stage 4, then the following could also be useful. Explaining how scientific research results are selected for publication and the role of critical scrutiny in driving scientific knowledge forward is not an easy task. The website http://www.senseaboutscience.net/ provides free resources focused on teaching 'how science works' at key stage 4.