Mobile devices and a modelling tool for physics experiments in high school

Traditional physics labs in high school suffer from slow data acquisition so that dynamic values of variables are hidden from students. Modern mobile devices such as Lego Mindstorms NXT, smartphones and Arduino can acquire data at a fast rate and can be used to measure dynamic variables in physics experiments. A case in point is the changing angle of a pendulum experiment. With a tool called InduLab, students in three groups using the mobile devices mentioned above in pendulum experiments collected data and built their model s with the data. Results reviewed the Arduino group achieved the highest success rate of building correct models, followed by the smartphone group and then the NXT group. This suggested that modern low-cost mobile devices can be used to improve physics labs in high school.