Virtual laboratory for the study of kinematics in engineering faculties

Abstract

In engineering faculties, kinematics is studied during the first year, providing the basic knowledge for understanding, modeling and designing mechanical systems. The traditional method of teaching kinematics uses drawings and mathematical equations to explain the motion of rigid bodies forming various mechanisms. From the experience of the authors, due to this approach students often tend to regard kinematics as excessively abstract, having difficulties in understanding the correspondence between analytical expressions and the actual behavior of mechanisms. The Virtual Laboratory of Kinematics (VLK) is an attempt to overcome these difficulties, by allowing students to visualize and interactively modify the motion and configuration of basic mechanisms. VLK consists of a package of software applications, which has been tested in theoretical mechanics classes during the past few years. The favorable feedback received from students encouraged the authors to improve it gradually and, recently, to completely re-write it, also implementing additional features and capabilities. © 2014 Springer-Verlag.