Currently 3d immersive simulations of science experiments implement a single configuration that the user or experimenter interacts with. The user may turn knobs and take readings, but the apparatus is, for the most part, pre-set in the configuration that serves the particular experiment, whilst the user is expected to take readings for that configuration. One trend in current science education is to allow students to design, construct and then perform an experiment. This gives the student a much wider, deeper and engaging experience. However, such an approach is extremely expensive on time and resources. It is possible to provide this experience in a 3d simulated environment by taking advantage of the object-oriented nature of current programming languages. This allows us to build behaviour into our 3d instruments alongside their graphical representations. This results in virtual scientific instrumentation that is configurable by the end user (rather than the programmer) which can then be used to assemble an experiment without any further programming. This allows the same virtual device to be used in different contexts and in different ways. Allowing an instrument to be dragged into position and then configured for the particular usage required by the experimenter. An example of this is given in the paper that shows how a timing gate can be designed as a self-contained virtual component that can be moved and orientated by the end user to suit many different virtual experiments. For example: In one orientation it can be used to time a swinging pendulum and in another orientation it can be used to measure the passing time of an accelerated trolley as part of an investigation into Newton's Laws. It is shown how this approach has been applied to a range of virtual instruments which allow users to construct experiments from their own design using a library of virtual scientific instruments which constitute a true virtual laboratory. Providing this flexibility in a virtual environment has enormous advantages in that there is no extra expense beyond creating the virtual instruments in the first place. Once these are created any number of users can design and then perform their own experiments in a virtual world. Additionally, creating a library of virtual instruments enables many different experiments to be rapidly created and performed.
