Simulators for Teaching Ltd Announces Launch of Absorption Spectrometer Simulator

Aug. 13, 2014 - PRLog -- The package consists of the simulator program with associated experiments and educational support material. The simulator itself is made up of two modules: a virtual flask which allows students to weigh out chemicals and prepare solutions for spectroscopic analyses. These samples can then be analysed in the second module: the absorption spectrometer simulator. The official launch date for the new product is 12th August 2014. This is the first commercial software of this type available anywhere in the world.

Sim4t believes that the absorption spectrometer simulator will be welcomed by students and teachers alike as a new and exciting addition to the teaching infrastructure currently available to them. The experiments are sold by Sim4t via download over the internet to be run on the customers’ own PCs. The software licences are tied to individual PCs and unlicensed computers will only run an evaluation mode. This ensures that potential customers can evaluate the software but effective use in teaching will only be available on purchase of a licence.

These are low cost alternatives to a formal teaching laboratory: for example, students can safely work their way through experiments using the simulator on a laptop which removes the need for expensive laboratory buildings, chemicals and staff. By substituting simulators for high cost scientific equipment in teaching laboratories, Sim4t is enabling better science education of larger numbers of students at a lower cost to the university, college or school.

Dr Tony Hallam, Chairman of Sim4t, a physicist and entrepreneur who has 40 years of experience in manufacturing scientific instrumentation and in computer programming said “simulators are well recognised as an excellent method for delivering training as a prelude to using equipment that is very expensive and/or very dangerous (e.g., aircraft, racing cars etc.). There is great scope for this concept to be extended and adapted to training in the use of scientific instruments used in teaching science. Nowadays modern scientific instruments are invariably driven from a computer screen. The experience of running our simulators is indistinguishable from the real thing. Consequently, our software allows students the chance to operate instrumentation which may otherwise be unavailable to them”.

Dr Linda Swanson, Managing Director of Sim4t, a chemist with over 20 years experience in developing practical undergraduate experiments and in teaching practical skills to science students said “I think that the key feature here is flexibility:  these teaching packs can be so many things to so many people. For example, in providing pre-training before students even reach a real laboratory through to allowing further practice in practical skills previously introduced in a formal class setting. The simulator provides the laboratory organizer, on the other hand, with more flexibility in timetabling experiments since he/she is not tied to using a dedicated formal teaching laboratory. Safety issues are also a significant feature: students have all of the experience of preparing solutions for analyses yet never have to handle a real chemical. In time, I can see products being developed that could allow students to experiment with (virtual) chemicals which could never be allowed in a real laboratory. Now that has to be exciting!”

Simulators for Teaching Limited was formed in 2011 by a team of experts in scientific instrumentation and teaching.  Our aim is to make sophisticated laboratory experiments affordable for every teaching laboratory and available to every science student.


For more information:

http://sim4t.com/uv-vis-experiment-simulators/

and

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCezS564e-gpKuvqJEQjJRAg/...