Body Element/Particle: The body element is the basic object upon which all the forces, velocities, accelerations, and various devices in the Force & Motion simulator operate. You may place up to ten of these objects anywhere in the simulation window. With the Select tool, you can move and resize body elements.

In addition, you can attach body elements to exploders, launchers, vertical and horizontal springs, and place them on tracks. You can impose forces, impulsive forces, accelerations, and velocities upon body elements. You can also equip body elements with thrusters.

Graph tools can plot any body element's position, velocity, acceleration, or the force acting on it. They can also plot kinetic, gravitational potential and elastic potential energies of body elements. If you first select a body element, you can place an energy-changes bar graph for that body that will track both changes in different types of energy and work done on the body. You can also open a force diagram window that shows all the different forces acting on the body.

In a body element's Properties Box, you can change its color (default is cyan) and give the body a name. You can also change the body's mass (default is 5 kg).

In addition, you can choose to:

• show position vector as a green arrow that extends from the origin
• show body name in a small yellow box that appears next to the body
• paste image from clipboard to represent the body element in place of the default filled circle used. The image must first be placed on the CPU Java Clipboard by the snapshot tool or from the Image Palette. This property allows you to replace the filled circle with pictures of cars, boats, aliens, rockets, lions, horses--whatever image may fit your instructional needs.
  
  The paste takes effect when you click Apply or OK. To avoid accidentally replacing your new image the next time you open the Properties Box to change mass, we suggest that you
  • check the paste image from clipboard box;
  • click Apply (note that the image of the body changes);
  • uncheck paste image from clipboard; and
  • click OK (note that the image of the body does not change).
• normal view option replaces pasted images with the default filled circle. This option just reverses the paste image from clipboard option. We suggest you follow the same four-step procedure.
• plot energy values in joules. If this box is checked, the graph tool plots energy values in joules. If it is not checked, the graph tool plots in kilojoules.