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Introduction


This is a work in progress and more activities will be added in the future. Check back later for a more tutorials

Please feel free to copy these documents and modify them according to your needs. I encourage you to make use of these in your classes.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Organization of This Document

This document contains a series of links to interactive SageMath worksheets. Each worksheet shows how to use various features of SageMath you might use to teaching first semester high school physics.

Introduction to SageMath


You can find numerous tutorials online for getting started with SageMath but here are a few of the better ones I've found.

Editing SageMath Worksheets


You are encouraged to edit these worksheets for your students. This material is released under the CC-BY 4.0 license. Please modify these documents to fit the needs of your class and share your changes with others. Many of the earlier sections could be used in a Modern Physics course with a little editing.

Editing Tips

  • Everything written in cells that start with %md on the first line are treated as Markdown cells (Markdown Tutorial)

  • Starting a cell with %html treats everything in the cell as HTML code

  • Double-click on the text of a cell to show the code

  • The hashtag '#' is used in calculation cells to indicate comments that are not parsed by SageMath

See the ReadMe for directions on how to copy these documents into your SageMathCloud project

First Semester High School Physics


- Units and Significant Figures

Units and Significant Figures Interactive Worksheet

This worksheet covers the following SageMath features:

  • Performing simple mathematical calculations

  • Getting decimal answers

  • Specifying number of significant figures

  • Working with units

  • Substituting in values for unit conversion

  • Defining functions

Calculations and Graphs

Calculations and Graphs Interactive Worksheet This worksheet covers the following SageMath features:

  • Creating variables

  • Defining functions

  • Plotting graphs

  • Label axes and creating legends on plots

VPython in SageMathCloud

In addition to doing computation in SageMath, you can also run Jupyter notebooks in SageMathCloud which allows you to use VPython to help model and visualize objects moving and interacting. The following interactive notebooks will get you started using VPython in SageMathCloud (You can also run them locally in your own version of Jupyter if you'd like).

Note: If animation screen does not appear when you run a cell, try restarting the kernel by clicking on the Kernel button and selecting Restart and Clear Output. This should fix most issues

- Getting Started with VPython

Intro to VPython Jupyter Notebook

This Jupyter notebook will cover the following features:

  • How to import VPython

  • How to draw spheres on screen

  • How to create new canvases

  • Using while loops in Python

  • How to animate a sphere

Modeling Constant Velocity in VPython

Modeling Constant Velocity Jupyter Notebook

This Jupyter notebook will cover the following features:

  • Animate different shapes with constant velocity

  • Create arrows to show direction of motion

  • Graph position vs. time

Constant Acceleration in VPython

Constant Acceleration Jupyter Notebook

  • Create objects moving with constant acceleration

Several demo programs

These demos were written by Bruce Sherwood for Matter and Interaction. These show off some of the capabilities of VPython

Future Worksheets

- Spring Forces

- Solving Systems of Equations

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.