Using Labview in Physics Simulations for Educational Purposes

At the Faculty of Applied Physics of the University of Twente we are increasingly using the computer for educational purposes. In making relatively complex experimental situations more accessible to students, a real-time computer simulation can be a valuable tool. Labview, although originally designed as a data acquisition and processing program, turns out to be a perfectly suitable programming environment for creating this kind of simulations. Labview's main assets are it's friendly and instrument-similar graphic user interface and it's calculating power. In this paper we will present a computer simulation of a peltier-experiment which focuses on the transport of heat in a peltier module used as a heat-pump.