Tychos Documentation and Reference
Last updated
Last updated
Tychos is a tool for teaching and learning about computational modeling of physical phenomenon. It has been designed to be easy to use and contains many features that make it ideal for helping teachers incorporate computational thinking into the science classroom.
If you are new to computational modeling, we suggest taking a look out our video tutorials first as a way to get oriented with Tychos.
Note that we are currently working on a new video series that demonstrates the use of the Python language, but at this point we only have video guides that demonstrate MathJs.
A good way to learn how to use Tychos is to explore some examples. Tychos scenarios can be written in two different languages. The default language is the popular Python programming language, but you can easily switch to MathJs which is how Tychos scenarios were originally authored.
Depending on which language you feel more comfortable learning/using, the language reference documentation is a good place to go to get more information about the coding interface, syntax and built in objects that you can use in Tychos.
The Tychos Python Application Programming Interface (API) and the MathJs Application Programming Interface (API) are similar but have important differences, so be sure to read the one that matches the language you intend to use for your Tychos scenarios.
If you are a teacher and you want to begin using Tychos in your classroom, we have created a series of example lessons that begin with an introduction to Tychos and computational modeling. These lessons provide you with a scope and sequence for taking students from basic coding all the way through teaching them how to model complex behavior like orbiting planets and oscillations!
We are working on updating our documentation to include example lessons using our new Python API, but currently we only have lessons that reference the MathJs language.