Application of GeoGebra software into teaching mechanical engineering courses

Abstract

Mechanics courses traditionally characterize with a rather low percentage of passing students. Dynamic mathematical packages like GeoGebra are widely used nowadays for teaching mathematics, but its interactive capabilities can be used for simulation of different physical phenomena. In this article few interactive applets for Static, Dynamic, Strength of Materials and Theory of Mechanisms and Machines courses, are presented. An experiment with comparison of the test results of two group of students after the exercise beam about internal forces, shows that group trained with GeoGebra applets have significantly higher mean result.