Parents' Guide to

Acrobots

By Debbie Gorrell, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 10+

Easy interactive physics tool lacks depth and focus.

App iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad Paid Education
Acrobots Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this app.

  • Acrobots App: Screenshot #1
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What’s It About?

ACROBOTS is very easy to use. At the start, a number of colorful acrobots appear on the screen. Icons for making changes are in the upper-left corner of the screen, but they are a bit difficult to see against the black background. Kids can tap a plus sign to add and a minus sign to take away acrobots. They can tap the lightbulb to change the screen from black to blue and the acrobots to all black. By tapping the bull's-eye icon, kids can access settings for eight factors and eight preset combinations of factors. Factors include size, gravity, balance, stickiness, atmosphere, speed, legs, and detail. Kids can use their fingers to stack or drag acrobots around. They also can shake their devices to randomly scatter the acrobots.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say: Not yet rated
Kids say: Not yet rated

Acrobots gives kids an opportunity to experiment and observe the effects of natural phenomena on moving objects in a virtual setting. Though it's truly only for entertainment, it also uses actual physics concepts, which confuses its intent a bit. There's actually a lot of potential for kids to learn, but very little learning support is built in. It's a good conversation starter, but be prepared to do a lot of the legwork to get kids to think about what they're doing and how it relates to science.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about the different available settings. Work together to figure out what some of the more ambiguous settings, such as stickiness and detail, mean.

  • Have kids use a journal to record the settings they adjust and how this affects the movements of the acrobots.

  • Discuss real-world examples of the physics concepts. Ask questions such as, "How does speed affect the motion of two cars that collide?"

App Details

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