Index of /physics/phet/dev/nukes/1.08.04

 Name                                                    Last modified      Size  Description
 Parent Directory                                                             -   
 nuclearphysics.jar                                      11-Jun-2006 12:29  863K  
 nukes.jnlp                                              11-Jun-2006 12:24  1.2K  
 nukes.png                                               07-Jun-2005 17:44   24K  
 nukes_es.jnlp                                           31-Jul-2005 12:13  1.6K  

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Nuclear Physics

What's new in 1.08.04

General

• Removed all the look and feel modifiactions for now. Will add them back in after adding color picker.
• Changed tabs so that they look like our new Tabs.
• Improved startup performance by defering initialization of each panel until the first time it's used. Note that the Controlled Chain Reaction panel takes a long time to initialize.

Alpha Decay

• Lower panel is correctly lined up under the upper panel

Fission: Single Nucleus panel

• Removed alpha particle from legend

Chain Reaction panel

• Neutron is fired from the same spot in the panel, regardless of the size of the vessel
• Neutrons are either absorbed or reflected when they hit the containment vessel.
• Nuclei are absorbed when them hit the containment vessel.
• U238 turns into U239 once they absorb a neutron.
• Added U239 to legend.
• Removed alpha particle from legend

Controlled Reaction

• The neutrons in this panel have tails and look like photons. They should just be round balls.

To Do

• Make containment vessel in Chain Reaction panel break up and fly apart and "vaporize".
• Decide what to do about the potential energy profile panels.
• After firing a neutron on the Fission:Single Nucleus panel, disable Fire Neutron button until module is reset
• The rest of the items in Kathy and Wendy's list

• Startup time and performance of Controlled Reaction panel
• Chain Reaction panel has performance problems when U238 is in the containment vessel.
• Chain Reaction panel doesn't put all the nuclei you specify in the spiner into the container if it can't find the place to put them, and it doesn't tell you why.
• Containment vessel in Chain Reaction panel doesn't fade out or do anything now.

History

1.08.03

General

• Should start up on first tab
• Pause and Play settings stay where they are placed when you switch panes.
• Remove help buttons since there is no help.
• Have the legend on each panel only display the applicable items to each tab.
• Button labels are illegible in Java 1.5
• You can’t see what the buttons (Reset, Help, Pause) say.
• Change tabs so that they look like our new Tabs. Not very do-able. I made them bigger, though, and more prominent

Alpha Radiation

• The atoms bounce around to fast. There speed needs cut down to 25% of it’s current speed and then we’ll look again
• Change the label “Running time to decay (msec)” to “Time to decay” and can the units be placed with the number?
• After the decay the alpha particle is moving around in the background instead of in the foreground.
• The lower section should look like a graph sitting in the play area rather than more play area. During interviews all the students thought it was a physical representation and could not make sense out of it. If it looks like a graph, it may go over better. Try making the axis lines more prominent also.
• gridlines overlay the profile, and there's a label to further suggest it is a graph
• In lieu of a rewind button I added a control that will pause the simulation at the start of alpha decay. The user can then step through the decay.

Fission:

• Speed reduced to half.
• Graph in lower portion as in Alpha Radiation panel
• nucleus on graph pane of single nucleus fission module flashes oddly sometimes

Chain Reaction panel

• Remove “Number of” and just have the label 235U nuclei (with spelling correction) as the label for each spinner.
• Remove “Percent” put a % sign to the right of the box or better yet, in the box with the number so that it’s formatted the same as the number.
• I would suggest a vessel that’s half as thick.
• There’s a wired little box that shows up around Enable Containment Vessel when you choose the check box but once you do something else in the control panel it disappears.
• "Enable Containment Vessel" color isn't the same as the other labels in the panel

Controlled Reaction

• The neutrons in this panel have tails and look like photons. They should just be round balls.