Keep your hat on
Last week my first year classes got their first tick in the simulations box on their 4psow. I'm not keen on using ready prepared (e.g. phET) simulations to collect data but prefer to simulate a physical system using a spreadsheet or software like Algodoo or interactive physics. The lab in question was the excel waves simulation. Students build their own wave animation based on the equation of a wave, if they get far enough they even get to make a standing wave by adding two waves together. Sounds a bit boring but its actually quite fun. Judging by the sounds of joy as their waves started to move across the screen, most of the students seemed to enjoy it. Obviously not too excited since they managed to keep their hats on.
Talking of animations I just did a really silly thing, I updated Java and now my computer won't run any of the oler animations, like those on Walter Fendt's site for example. This is one of my favourite sites. I particularly like the way you can choose the language that you want to run the animation in. I always ask the students to pick a flag then try to run the animation in the given language. Usually got a laugh.