Bringing partial differential equations to life for students

Teaching partial differential equations (PDEs) carries inherent difficulties that an interactive visualization might help overcome in an active learning process. However, the generation of this kind of teaching material implies serious difficulties, mainly in terms of coding efforts. This work describes how to use an authoring tool, Easy Java Simulations, to build interactive simulations using FreeFem++ (Hecht F 2012 J. Numer. Math. 20 251) as a PDE solver engine. It makes possible to build simulations where students can change parameters, the geometry and the equations themselves getting an immediate feedback. But it is also possible for them to edit the simulations to set deeper changes. The process is ilustrated with some basic examples. These simulations show PDEs in a pedagogic manner and can be tuned by no experts in the field, teachers or students. Finally, we report a classroom experience and a survey from the third year students in the Degree of Mathematics at the University of Murcia.