Following the consensus-making discussion, students begin the Application Phase activities. Here students are asked to apply the consensus ideas to a wide variety of new situations. To give an example of a Development Phase activity, we will consider the activity in which students explore simple and complex shadows. One of the purposes of the activity is to provide evidence that would help students develop the Extended Source Idea, in which an extended source is considered as a continuous sequence of point sources. At the beginning of the activity students explore the simple shadow formed with a point light source, object and screen.
Students perform their experiments alongside a computer.
Special software, designed for the CPU project, provides students with instructions for their activities, poses questions, helps students to keep track of their evolving ideas, and enables students to explore phenomena with specially designed simulations. Sequence of set-ups for complex shadow activity. With one of the simulators students can set up various arrangements to explore simple and complex shadows and pinhole phenomena. After making a prediction about what they would expect to see on the screen students can receive phenomenological feedback in this case, a picture Figure 2. The front view of this screen is shown in the middle.