DEVELOPMENT OF THE CROSS-PLATFORM VIRTUAL LABORATORY ON PHYSICS

The increasing popularity among new learning tools in higher education is gained by virtual laboratories due to simplicity in use, financial and safety issues. The results of development of virtual laboratory on physics with use of Rich Internet Application (RIA) are presented. The virtual laboratory is implemented on the basis of Unity 3D with use of C#. The technological basis, structure, realization of virtual physical laboratory and the user interface are described. Thus, the development and application of the computer-based training systems is currently one of the main trends in the field of the higher education. Virtual physical laboratories represent one of the successful examples of introduction of information technologies in the training process. Using various basic and additional materials in teaching process allows not only widening initially assumed field of knowledge, but also arousing much greater interest in students and raising their motivation while studying a subject. In particular, usage of virtual models in educational process increases the clarity and visibility of the studied process and helps students to work out and understand the theoretical basis of the material in more detail. While using virtual models as a teaching tool, a student gets more opportunities to perform research and creative activities, which, in its turn, allow him to learn and understand deeply the taught material. It can be said that the virtual model must be complex enough in order to allow students to be creative. A virtual laboratory is one of the examples of such models, which eliminates the drawbacks mentioned above. A virtual laboratory is a software program or a set of related software programs, which performs computer modeling or simulation of some physical, chemical or other processes. Using such programs plays an essential role in studying technical and natural sciences, for instance, physics. One of the most efficient ways of studying physical processes is the demonstration of physical phenomena using real physical equipment. However, sometimes it is impossible to employ real physical devices. Very often, laboratories lack standard equipment due to some reasons, for example, its physical dimensions or high cost (Atwood machine, Maxwell pendulum, or scanning electron microscope). In such cases, a perfect solution is virtual laboratories, which allow conducting physical experiments on computers.