Ricardian Explorer, implemented on the internet, simulates a Ricardian trade model with linear production technology and a CES utility function. The typical simulation has two countries and two goods. While Ricardian explorer was developed to supplement a course in international trade, it can also be used in intermediate microeconomics and microeconomic principles courses. The authors of the simulation are Alberto Isgut and Tanya Rosenblat of Wesleyan University.

While working in groups to facilitate peer tutoring, students manipulate a hands-on, physical model to better comprehend the Earth's position in space, the Earth's rotation axis and seasons.

A classroom auction reveals reservation prices and a demand curve for an introductory economics course.

This activity is an investigation of free fall and projectile motion through a track and field situation.

This activity describes a simple clear demonstration of electric generators (Faraday's Law) and electric motors (Lorentz Force). This demonstration can be used as an interactive lecture demonstration.

This activity is a classroom experiment where students participate or observe that different densities of liquids will yield different results in a sink-or-float activity.

This example engages students in a simple simulation of specialization and division of labor. All that is needed are staplers and some paper.

This is a simulation for a beginning econometrics course that shows students how heteroskedasticity biases an estimator and why the power of a statistical text is important.

While working in groups to facilitate peer tutoring, students manipulate a hands-on, physical model to better comprehend several characteristics of subduction zone earthquakes.

A free online simulation that demonstrated the bull-whip effect, and the complexities of supply chain management, responding to changes in customer demand.

This ILD helps students to understand the relationship between total revenue and price elasticity of demand.

Students predict the best graphical representation of US real GDP/capita during the last twenty years, choosing from graphs showing: cyclical decline, cyclical change with no net change, cyclical increase, or erratic wide fluctuations. Using actual US data, students graph real GDP/capita to find out the actual pattern: a rising series with periodic dips, not a flat series, a falling series, or a highly erratic series as students often predict. Students then reflect on why this pattern is often misunderstood and why it may not fully describe the well-being of the US population.

This activity is a classroom activity in which students see the difference between vectors and scalars and learn how to graphically add vectors.

This activity uses an Interactive Lecture Demonstration to help students understand the definition of money in a modern economy. Starting with the common misconception that money is coins and currency, the activity challenges this belief through a survey of student assets. Students reflect on ways in which the survey changed their understanding and consider why misconceptions about money are so common by watching videos of well-educated adults misunderstanding money.

This inteactive lecture and series of demonstrations develops the concepts and vocabulary of oscillatory motion as it relates to the motion of a mass on a spring.

This series of questions before instruction, in-class peer instruction as students come to understanding, and visualization of an important mathematical relationship allow students to iterate and improve their understanding of work incrementally.

This activity provides a complete curriculum for teaching the photoelectric effect using the PhET Photoelectric Effect simulation in a large-lecture modern physics course. It includes links to powerpoint slides for two to three 50-minute lectures using Peer Instruction with clickers, and one homework assignment suitable for an online homework system. Research has demonstrated that students in classes using this curriculum have a better understanding of the photoelectric effect than students in classes using traditional instruction supplemented by a computerized tutor.

Labs and tutorials that use equipment such as circuits can be modified to use PhET simulations instead. Research shows that substituting the PhET Circuit Construction Kit simulation for real equipment in a variety of contexts leads to improved conceptual learning in the best cases, and the same conceptual learning in the worst cases. There are many advantages to using PhET simulations over real equipment: They are easy to use, so students can play around and modify the experiment quickly and easily without fear of breaking the equipment. They have productive constraints to focus attention on the most important aspects of the experiment (e.g. bulb brightness and current flow) rather than on irrelevant aspects (e.g. wire color and length). Finally, if real equipment is not available, PhET simulations provide the opportunity to do multiple experiments with a single piece of equipment: a computer.

These labs provide examples of using very open-ended questions to guide students in exploring a simulation and designing their own experiments. These labs can lead to a high level of quantitative thinking about data analysis.