Understanding the Physics of changing mass phenomena

Changing mass phenomena, like a falling chain or a bungee jumper, might give surprising results, even for experienced physicists. They have resulted in hot discussions in journals, in which for instance Physics professors claim the impossibility of an acceleration larger then g in case of a bungee jumper. These phenomena are also interesting as topics for challenging student projects, and used as such by Dutch high school students. I will take these phenomena as the context in which I like to demonstrate the possibilities of ICT in the learning process of physics. Especially dynamical modeling enables us to describe these phenomena in an elegant way and with knowledge of high school mathematics. Furthermore tools for video‐analysis and data from measurements with sensors allow us to study the phenomena in experiments. This example demonstrates the level of implementation of ICT in Physics Education in The Netherlands [1].