Welcome to the CAMSE simulators page
These simulators were developed as part of the Inquiry into Radioactivity project, funded by the National Science Foundation (DUE-0942699).
Learning about radiation requires understanding of submicroscopic worlds. Many students lack sufficient understandings of atoms, nuclei, molecules, and cells to make sense of ionization by radiation, emission of radiation, and other fundamental processes related to radioactivity. The simulators on this site have been developed to help students with specific difficulties. Dr. Andy Johnson and programmer Forest Johnson designed the simulators with specific pedagogical goals in mind, but they also have gamelike features.
The web player versions here will run in most browsers, but your computer may have to install the Unity Web Player (which takes only a minute or two).
Atom Builder
The Atom Builder simulator allows the the user to build and test nearly every known atom. Students can use it to identify the roles and effects of protons, electrons, and neutrons in atoms. The Testing World allows students to distinguish between ionization status and radioactivity. The simulator opens in "neutron management" mode which restricts the choices of atoms and nuclei that can be built. Ask Andy Johnson how to access the full set of features. This is fun! Try it and see.
Note: The Testing World does not show chemically correct atom behavior - all atoms bounce off each other in this simulation. However, the behavior of individual atoms is intended to be more or less realistic and is based on data from multiple sources including the National Nuclear Data Center at Brookhaven National Laboratory. We welcome comments and suggestions.
Atom Invaders
The Atom Invaders simulator helps students investigate the interaction of radiation with matter at the atomic / molecular scale. The user selects projectiles and their energy levels, and blasts away at nitrogen atoms and molecules. Students can work out the effects of the different kinds of radiation on orbital electrons and on nuclei. This simulator is one of two designed for helping students develop a model of how radiation interacts with matter and damages tissue.
Tracks
The Tracks simulator helps students "connect the dots" - so to speak - with the effects of radiation on matter. It consists of a radiation lab, in which the behaviors and effects of single radiation particles can be observed at three vastly different size scales - macroscopic, cell scale, and molecule scale. This enables students to construct a more coherent model of radiation as particles, and another model of how those particles interact and can cause damage in people. Liberties have been taken with the molecular and cellular structure of matter and tissue to enable this simulator to play at reasonable speeds on low end computers, but the radiation effects are more or less realistic. This simulator focuses on what radiation does. Please send comments about this simulator!
Thanks to programmer/designer Forest Johnson, who designed these simulators in collaboration with the IiR project, and performed all of the coding.