Portal 2 for Teaching Physics


Just happened to run across the news entitled Valve introduces 'Teach with Portals'  yesterday, question I pondered was, what is it? After some research I found that Portal 2 is a gaming platform developed by Valve studios to teach students basically the concepts of physics but also extends  to maths, chemistry, engineering and language arts. Based on Valve’s best-selling game, Portal 2, it is free educational collection of puzzles and teacher-created content that helps to build an innovative curriculum. 

 Vow part is that it also offers free lesson plans for teachers. All they have to do is to do a sign-up process for the summer beta and once approved by the education team, they are ready to go!  I could not stop myself from exploring the lesson plans in Physics based on this amazing world of gaming. Here is the sneak-peak at the descriptions of summary of few lesson plans-

 On Specific velocity - Students will have freedom in this lesson to build a puzzle that challenges players to acquire a specific velocity through conservation of energy.

 Conservation of Energy- Students will design their own experiment to demonstrate the effects of mass and velocity on a two-body collision. Students will analyze the effects of varying momentum in collisions.
Screenshot of Lesson Plan on Conservation of Momentum


 In the Portal 2 games, student player control the player’s character and simple objects using the ‘portal gun’ to solve the puzzles and progress from one level to the next. The Portal games are created using a physics engine, which is computer software that simulates real-world physics. Here, students interact with physically simulated objects (cubes, catapults, lasers, etc.). With this interaction students are supposed to develop an intuitive understanding of physical principles such as mass and weight, acceleration, momentum, gravity, and energy. The game is also supposed to promote critical thinking, spatial reasoning, problem solving, iteration and collaboration skills, and encourage overall inquiry into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) learning.

 Besides offering free resources the website  TEACHWITHPORTALS also provides a community where teachers have the opportunity to share curricula, lessons and classroom experiences by registering to be a part of a forum for teachers. Way to go technology!

 Additionally, I found the following You Tube video by Professor Phil Moriarty's that very well demonstrates the Physics behind Portal 2.

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