Test device
Dell

Operating System
Win10

Browser
Chrome

Problem description
For phetsims/qa#972, with ?stringTest=double, the panels on the Air Pressure screen become misaligned.

Visuals

From a TODO, we need to add credits in sound-main.ts

{{SIM_NAME}} main checklist

Design

• Sim folder and design doc created (Date: //)
  • Create sim folder in PhET Sim Design Folder using phet-docs account
  • Place design doc in the sim folder
• Review user feedback
  • If a Port: Google Form suggestions reviewed
  • If a new sim: Google Form suggestions reviewed
• Learning goals and standards identified (Date: //)
• Design concept complete (Date: //)
• Wireframes complete (Date: //)
• Mockups complete (Date: //)
  • Mockups checked for colorblind and greyscale
• Features for PhET-iO discussion
• Interviews complete (Date: //)
  • Results reported to team
  • Notes pasted into design doc
  • Back-up of interviews
• Lead designer "sign off" (Date: //)
  • Performance acceptable
  • Carefully review ?showPointerAreas
  • No new feature requests
• Pre-prototype items
  • Auxiliary screenshots (at least 1 additional)
  • Accessories (keywords, categories, description, learning goals, related sims, NSDL) as appropriate
  • Email/Twitter announcement language
  • Teacher Guide created, uploaded, and added to sim design folder
• Pre-publication items
  • Auxilary screenshots (up to 3 additional)
  • Screen-specific screenshots for metadata service (see naming convention)
  • Accessories (keywords, categories, description, learning goals, related sims, NSDL)
  • Accessibility features
  • Email announcement language
  • Teacher Guide created, uploaded, and added to sim design folder
  • LoL icons for each screen created and uploaded to Drive
  • LoL metadata for each screen (description, vocab words, questions for before/after sim use)
• Make sim visible on website
  • Clear "Metadata caches" on the Basic Administration Caches page
• Post-publication items
  • If a Port: Review legacy gold star activities, copy over if appropriate
  • Share new features, design challenges, and treats with group!
  • Email announcement
  • Deliver to Legends of Learning
  • Create "sim primer" issue
  • Hold postmortem if applicable (Date: //)

Inclusive Features

• Alternative Input (Started: ) (Completed: )
• Pan & Zoom
• Sound & Sonification (UI)
• Sound & Sonification (Pedagogical) - (include link to relevant sonification design document)
  • Sound design complete (Started: ) (Completed: )
  • Development complete (Started: ) (Completed: )
• Interactive Description - (link to description design & implementation checklist)
  • Description design complete (Started: ) (Completed: )
  • Development complete (Started: ) (Completed: )
  • Mobile description included
• Voicing - (include links to relevant voicing design document)

Implementation

• Repository created by following new_repo_checklist.md (Date: //)
• Development started (Date: //)
• Sim is "feature complete" (Date: //)
• QA team "first look" (Date: //)
• Interviews may happen around here (see above)
• Code review checklist completed" (Date: //)
• Sim team sign-off (Date: //)
• Code review completed (Date: //)
• Sim dev test completed (Date: //)
• Sim RC tests completed (Date: //)
• Pre-publication items
  • Main screenshot (read this)
  • Verify credits with lead (Team, Contributors, QA, Graphic Arts, Sound Design, any Thanks - see conventions)
  • Add CT tests for public query parameters
• Published (Date: //)

QA

• If a Port: Legacy sim tested for bugs; issues reported in repo
• Dev testing started (Date: //)
• Dev testing completed (Date: //)
• First RC published (Date: //)
  • Test matrices put in Testing Matrices Folder
• RC testing completed (Date: //)

Test device
Samsung
Operating System
Win 11
Browser
Chrome
Problem description
For phetsims/qa#974
There is a minor pointer overlap between the air density slider and the air density reset button on the last screen.

Visuals

Troubleshooting information:

The sim is looking very close to feature complete. All features from the java sim appear to be implemented, with the following intentional changes:

• Removed the "cone effect" from the sound waves coming out of the speaker
• Add 'x' symbol to person in Two Sources screen to show the location being sonified
• Limit dragging of person to the vertical axis in Two Sources screen
• Changed the UX from 'Air Density in Speaker Box' from an on/off button to a slider

@KatieWoe can you check that all features are correctly carried over from the java version, other than the intentional differences listed above?

Test device
Samsung Chromebook
Operating System
ChromeOS
Browser
Chrome
Problem description
For phetsims/qa#972. Related to #30. If you set the frequency on the Reflection screen to 0 hz, then try to pulse, the pulse button is stuck. If you then reset all in this state, the pulse feature is permanently unusable until the sim is reloaded. If you change frequency before resetting the permanent unusability may not happen.
Steps to reproduce

1. Go to the reflection screen
2. Set scene to pulse
3. Change the frequency to 0
4. Hit the pulse button
5. Hit reset all

Visuals

Troubleshooting information:

This was not clear to me at first and made the behavior of the 'Air Density' slider very confusing. In the java sim, the UI for 'Air Density' has buttons for 'Remove air from box', and 'Add air to box', making this more clear. I think a low-cost solution here would be to change the label of the 'Air Density' slider to 'Air Density in Box' or 'Density of Air in Box'.

User reported no sound playing on iPad Pro when 'Listener Audio' is checked.

Environment:
IPad Pro. Chrome. Also tested in Safari. Listener Audio on. Volume set high.

Test device
MacBook Air M1 chip

Operating System
13.5

Browser
Safari 16.6

Problem description
For phetsims/qa#972, on the Measure Screen it is possible to lose the ruler on the bottom of the screen.

Steps to reproduce

1. On the Measure Screen, drag the ruler off screen and let go.

Visuals

Troubleshooting information:
!!!!! DO NOT EDIT !!!!!
Name: ‪Sound Waves‬
URL: https://phet-dev.colorado.edu/html/sound-waves/1.0.0-dev.5/phet/sound-waves_all_phet.html
Version: 1.0.0-dev.5 2023-08-21 17:16:24 UTC
Features missing: applicationcache, applicationcache, touch
Flags: pixelRatioScaling
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/16.6 Safari/605.1.15
Language: en-US
Window: 1196x618
Pixel Ratio: 2/1
WebGL: WebGL 1.0
GLSL: WebGL GLSL ES 1.0 (1.0)
Vendor: WebKit (WebKit WebGL)
Vertex: attribs: 16 varying: 30 uniform: 1024
Texture: size: 16384 imageUnits: 16 (vertex: 16, combined: 32)
Max viewport: 16384x16384
OES_texture_float: true
Dependencies JSON: {}

There were some TODO that did not reference GitHub issues, so were failing the "todo-should-have-issue" lint rule. They are temporarily referencing this issue.

Similar to phetsims/faradays-electromagnetic-lab#91.

The Java version was called "Sound" with a project name of sound. The HTML5 version was renamed "Sound Waves" and its repo name is sound-waves. Both versions are currently visible on the website, which shouldn't happen for ports.

@mattpen can you please add a mapping of sound to sound-waves to the website?

Test device
MacBook Air M1 chip

Operating System
13.5

Browser
Safari 16.6

Problem description
For phetsims/qa#972, the font size is unusually small in this sim. I know this is meant to be a quick release, but I wanted to mention it.

Here is a comparison with Gravity and Orbits:

The sound sim applies a "cone" effect for the sound waves, which looks like this:

The physics displayed here are problematic both in terms of accuracy as well as pedagogy. The correct behavior is displayed in the 'Waves Intro' and 'Wave Interference' sims:

I strongly recommend removing this cone effect, as it is not an accurate model can be confusing to students (eg. Why am I able to hear sound from a speaker if I'm standing next to it and not in front of it?)

The sim will support translation, so we should have a localization menu in the preferences.

To reproduce:

• Open 'Intro' screen
• Check 'Audio Enabled' and 'Listener'
• Move the listener all the way to the right
• The audio will be silent

The sound should have a non-zero amplitude at this point, consistent with the inverse-square law. This is an important pedagogical aspect that should block publication in my opinion. It should be relatively straightforward to track this down and implement the correct audio behavior.

From status meeting discussion during 'Sound Waves' demo:

Should we start the process of implementing visual improvements to the 'Listener'?

It would be nice to replace the Java version of the Sound sim. We did not port sound to "decaf" via CheerpJ due to incompatibilities with the sound output.

I published a dev version here for review: https://phet-dev.colorado.edu/html/sound/1.0.0-dev.2/phet/sound_en_phet.html

What else would need to be done before this can replace the Java version?

Noted while working on another cross-cutting issue...

Many of the string keys for this sim do not conform to PhET's naming conventions. Once the sim is published, PhET is effectively struck with those string keys. And that's a problem when a PhET-iO version is published, because the keys are used to name the string Properties that appear in the Studio tree.

Please see the item that begins with "Make sure the string keys are all perfect" in code-review-checklist.md. In general, keys should correspond as closely as possible to the English string values.

For example:

  "reflectionControlPanel.positionSlider": {
    "value": "Wall Position"
  },

should be:

  "reflectionControlPanel.wallPosition": {
    "value": "Wall Position"
  },

The nesting under reflectionControlPanel is also questionable and not typical, so I recommend simply:

  "wallPosition": {
    "value": "Wall Position"
  },

A prototype version of this sim was recently published. Hopefully these keys can still be changed.

I tried to run the all version here in Dutch, and it didn't load. I believe the Dutch strings were provided. Not sure how they can be extracted and used within our system, or if we will just have to redo them after publication.
https://phet-dev.colorado.edu/html/sound/1.0.0-dev.2/phet/sound_all_phet.html?locale=nl

Test device
MacBook Air M1 chip

Operating System
13.5

Browser
Safari 16.6

Problem description
For phetsims/qa#974, with ?stringTest=dynamic I am seeing two issues:

1. The units on the ruler:

2. The scales for Wall Position and Wall Angle can become misaligned:

Test device
MacBook Air M1 chip

Operating System
13.5

Browser
Safari 16.6

Problem description
For phetsims/qa#972 and related to #24:

1. The "help" button that appeared on the first 3 screens of the java sim was removed. Perhaps indicator arrows should be used so that users know the listener (screens 1 and 3), and speaker (screen 2) can be moved?
2. On the Measure Screen, the movable blue lines are missing. I didn't see this listed as a change in #24.

Visuals

Test device
Samsung
Operating System
Win 11
Browser
Chrome
Problem description
For phetsims/qa#972
Trying to load the debug version of the sim fails and the errors pictured below show up in the console.

Visuals

Troubleshooting information:

In the java version of the sim, the image of the person in the Two Sources screen makes it (relatively) clear that the person's ear is the location being represented by the sim audio. See screenshot:

This is helpful for showing students the details of the interference pattern, where behavior can change quickly in short distances. The current version of the Sound sim makes it unclear which point is being represented:

I recommend adding a small addition to the graphics of the person, such as a dot or an 'x' marking the location that is represented by the sim audio.

While reviewing the sim, I saw the layout looks like this:

This seems unbalanced, can we please try the following?

1. Move the play/pause buttons to the right, under the control panels
2. Scale the sound box (maintaining aspect ratio) so that it fills the dev bounds vertically
3. Left-align the sound box with the left edge of the dev bounds
4. Make the control panel fonts and controls larger
5. For the control panel and reset all button, use the same margin on the top/right/bottom edges

Navbar looks like this:

This has similar pedagogical issues to #14. Allowing the sound waves to propagate through the left side of the speaker will fix the problem.

In the java version of the sim, the 'Two Source Interference' screen plays the audio heard by the listener at their current location. This allows the user to move the listener around and hear the points of constructive/destructive interference, which is pedagogically important for this screen.

In the current version of the sim, checking 'Audio Enabled' on this screen simply plays the sound being produced by the speakers, with no interference effects. This does not seem correct for the learning goals of the screen.

I would like to discuss this with @samreid and @marlitas because it may be a big lift to implement this if there is currently no framework for spatializing the audio in 2D and with multiple sources.

Test device
MacBook Air M1 chip

Operating System
13.5

Browser
Safari 16.6

Problem description
For phetsims/qa#972, the behavior is different between 1.0.0-dev.5 and the java sim when I change the amplitude while the frequency has a value of 0 Hz. In the java sim nothing happens while in the current dev version a wave is produced. I wasn't sure what the behavior should be.

Steps to reproduce
Compare these steps in both versions:

1. On any screen, move the frequency slider to 0 Hz.
2. Once there are no more waves on the screen, move the amplitude slider.

Visuals

@kathy-phet said:

Can you please support Jan and Piet to contribute their HTML code of the Sound simulation?

They have signed the CLA and I received the files via zip file.

The sim is in a good place as far as features. We'd like to take a look at dynamic strings and localization before moving into dev testing.

The current design of the sim has a checkbox for 'Audio Enabled', along with two radio buttons for 'Speaker' and 'Listener'. When reviewing the sim features, it was discovered that this design created problems with pedagogy and UX.

UX issues:

• Setting the default value to 'Speaker' makes it unclear what location is being sonified. When this option is checked, moving the person closer or further from the speaker does not have an effect on the audio. During testing, @KatieWoe and I found to be confusing and initially thought it was a bug. At the very least, I recommend making the default setting 'Listener' so that the audio represents the sound heard by the person.

Pedagogical issues:

• Sonification should make clear what location is being represented by the audio. Sound intensity approaches infinity as distance approaches zero, so the sim is already choosing a "default" distance for the 'Speaker' setting but it is not clear to the user what this distance is.
• The speaker does not have an "absolute" sound intensity that can be sonified. Sound intensity is inherently connected to distance from the source, and with the 'Speaker' option selected it is unclear where the sonified location is for this setting.
• In the 'Air Pressure' screen, the speaker will not create any sound waves if all air is removed from the speaker box. On this screen, the 'Speaker' setting still plays sound. This is especially confusing, because there would be no sound waves produced anywhere.

I recommend removing the 'Speaker' setting altogether and set the audio checkbox to 'Enable Listener Audio. This would only enable sonificiation on the screens in which there is a listener, which I feel is more than enough for users to explore sonification and the roles of frequency, amplitude and interference throughout the sim. This allows the user to still hear what the different frequencies and amplitudes of the speaker will sound like to the person on the screen in a more straightforward and pedagogically rigorous way.

In dev testing, it was noted that extreme low frequencies (under 50 Hz) lead to issues such as #30 and #33, as well as visual problems with the frame-by-frame animation of the vibrating speaker.

These extreme low frequencies do not add to the pedagogical value of the sim, and I recommend capping the minimum frequency at 100 Hz. This will still allow users to study the relationship between frequency and wavelength, without breaking the limitations of the speaker animation system and Amplitude / Pulse controls.

It is about 2000 LOC, may be good to do a mini-review while converting to TypeScript

The teacher tips and metadata for the sim need to be updated before publishing as a prototype. I'd like to talk with @catherinecarter about what else to include in this checklist for the unique case of this sim.

In the Air Density screen, removing air from the box should not affect the vibration of the speaker. In the java sim, the speaker continues to vibrate even when air is removed from the box.

In the 'Two Sources' screen, I noticed some distortion of the waves along a horizontal line above the top speaker. See below:

Removing this seems worth investigating since it is visually noticeable students may ask about it.

On Monday Sept 26, @samreid said in a slack message with @arouinfar and @kathy-phet 👍

Hi Kathy & Amy, I responded to an email about incorporating a 3rd party (Jan and Piet) implementation of the PhET Sound simulation into our codebase. What do you want to call the repo + sim name for the HTML implementation? It looks like the repo name in Java was “sound”, and the Java title was “Sound Waves”.

@arouinfar replied:

Are you talking about this sim? Seems like it’s just called “Sound”. I double checked the sim itself and the name in the table on the Admin > Simulations page.

I replied:

OK sounds good, thanks

Today @pixelzoom said:

Based on your other posts, I’m guessing this is a new sim. And I’m sort of surprised by such a generic-sounding sim name.

There are currently 52 imports from wave-interference, including images, sound effects, UI components, etc. Should we treat "wave-interference" like a common code dependency (like circuit-construction-kit-common, or density-buoyancy-common), or should we take time to move things to tambo, scenery-phet, etc?

@kathy-phet and @pixelzoom what do you recommend?

Test device
MacBook Air (m1 chip)

Operating System
13.5

Browser
safari 16.5

Problem description
For phetsims/qa#974, this might be outside the scope of this release, but it looks really odd to me that the wave doesn't disappear/update when the wall is moved during pause.

Steps to reproduce

1. Go to the Reflection Screen and pause the sim after waves have reached the wall
2. Move the Wall Angle slider all the way to the right
3. Press play and then pause again
4. Move the Wall Position slider all the way to the right

Visuals

In #3, we received the nl translation for this sim. https://github.com/phetsims/sound/blob/eb69a225ca9131538d4695288252930487bf6d1d/sound-strings_nl.json

Can it be moved to babel? Do we need to do any more steps to make sure it will work correctly?