Energy2D: Interactive Heat Transfer Simulations for Everyone

[concord]

I have released the first stable version of Energy2D. Check it out:

http://energy.concord.org/energy2d/index.html

Based on computational physics, Energy2D is an interactive, visual simulation program that models all three mechanisms of heat transfer—conduction, convection, and radiation. Students can use it as an inquiry tool to explore heat and mass flows in two-dimensional structures under different environmental conditions such as sunlight and wind. Physical science, Earth science, and engineering teachers from middle schools to colleges may find Energy2D a useful tool in their classes to teach complicated science and engineering concepts.

Energy2D runs within any web browser on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, provided that Java is installed and enabled. In addition, Energy2D can be used as a standalone application for creating energy simulations. Your simulations can be deployed as Java applets embedded in web pages. The capability of creating complex scientific simulations is one of the most important features of Energy2D. Providing an intuitive user interface to support that feature is the most important development goal of Energy2D. It is our hope that you and/or your students will be able to design new computational experiments to test a hypothesis or solve a problem using Energy2D.


Charles Xie

[lookang]

Hi Charles !

Thanks for sharing.

Will check it out soon when I have a pc.

By the way, how did the free software come about?
I been trying to show my work place that the best way to impact or scaling up desired education tools is to give free software.

But it seems commercialization is a key reason to fund research in my country .

Any thoughts on how i can move on ?

[concord]

Hi Lookang:

I don't know about Singapore. But I have to constantly write grant proposals to the National Science Foundation (US) to fund my work (Energy2D is one of the products developed in a $2.2M NSF grant). Funding from a federal agency allows us to release our software in free and open-source form that benefits everyone. Believe it or not, even in the US, schools do not have funding to buy software. Many rural and urban schools have computers that we will call antiques.

I have been trying to work with some Chinese partners to see if they are interested in investing in educational software. The Chinese system is very different from the US system and there are capitals that are actively looking for safe harbors to park their money. Considering the centrality of the Chinese education system, commercialization may be more viable.


Charles

[concord]

This is a mantle convection simulation using Energy2D:




http://energy.concord.org/energy2d/mantle.html

I hope to build more capacities like this into Energy2D to make it a good simulator for Earth Science as well.

Prof. Hwang, is there an easy way to embed the Energy2D applet (only 500K) into NTNUJava?