About TEALsim:

The development and release of these open-source educational software tools is funded in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation under DUE Award 0618558 and by the Davis Educational Foundation (http://www.davisfoundations.org/). The Davis Foundation was established by Stanton and Elisabeth Davis after his retirement as chairman of Shaw’s Supermarkets, Inc. Software development was funded by the National Science Foundation, by the d'Arbeloff Fund for Excellence in Education, and by iCampus (http://icampus.mit.edu)..

The TEAL Simulation Framework is an environment for creating, presenting, and controlling simulations that represent physical and mathematical concepts. A single simulation may run as either a Java application or Applet. The framework provides integrated core services, including: user interface components, plug-able application 'Look and Feel' templates, an HTML Browser, simple audio support, visualization tools, realtime 3D rendering, and a well defined simulation model. Simulation components include a collection of rendered objects, geometric primitives, simple mechanical tools, and electromagnetic components and constructs designed to work within the simulation model and rendering system. An additional feature of the framework is the ability to import and export application components and simulation state using XML.

An application designer builds a simulation by adding components to the framework. The components may represent objects to be simulated, GUI controls for object properties, visualization components such as field lines or force vectors, application specific actions, and information to be presented via the browser. Default user interface templates and simulation engines may be used, or application specific implementations may be created.

The simulation model, or engine, is responsible for the numerical integration of the simulation variables. Simulations may be be run using an internally generated time step or may be driven by external data read from a file or remote source.

TEALsim is open source. Please visit our download page to get the latest build of our "for comment" release.