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It seems obvious that a moving picture should teach motion better than a still one. Physics is full of change: waves travel, pendulums swing, currents grow. Yet the studies comparing animations, interactive simulations and static diagrams give a more careful answer, and it is useful for deciding how to study each topic.
What did studies comparing them find?
The largest summary is a 2007 meta-analysis by Höffler and Leutner, published in Learning and Instruction. Across 26 studies and 76 comparisons, animations beat static pictures with a medium overall effect (d = 0.37). The advantage was bigger in some cases:
when the animation represented the content itself rather than decorating it (d = 0.40);
when it was highly realistic, such as video (d = 0.76);
when learners were acquiring procedural-motor knowledge, meaning how to physically do something (d = 1.06).
So animation helps on average, and helps most for showing how to perform a procedure.
Why do animations sometimes fail?
A review by Barbara Tversky, Julie Morrison and Mireille Betrancourt, "Animation: can it facilitate?" (2002), looked closely at studies where animation seemed to win. In those cases, they found, "the animated graphics convey more information or involve interactivity", so the comparison was not fair. They also pointed out that animations "are often too complex or too fast to be accurately perceived", and that many continuous events are thought of "as sequences of discrete steps". Their suggestion: "Judicious use of interactivity may overcome both these disadvantages."
Richard Mayer and colleagues tested this directly in four experiments published in 2005. Students learned how lightning forms, how a toilet tank works, how ocean waves work and how car brakes work, either from narrated animations or from paper diagrams with text, using the same words and graphics. The paper group did significantly better on 4 of 8 retention and transfer comparisons, with no significant difference on the rest. The authors argue static pictures can reduce wasted processing and leave more room for thinking.
Where interactive simulations add value
An interactive simulation is different from an animation you watch. You change the inputs and see what follows. A 2012 review by Rutten, van Joolingen and van der Veen found "robust evidence that computer simulations can enhance traditional instruction, especially as far as laboratory activities are concerned". In one well-known physics example, Finkelstein and colleagues (2005) found that students who used a circuit simulation instead of real equipment did better on a conceptual survey and on assembling a real circuit.
The common thread: what helps is control and prediction, not motion for its own sake.
When is each one better? A decision guide
This guide is our reading of the studies above, not a rule from any one paper.
Use a static diagram when:
the process has clear stages you need to remember in order, such as the steps of a derivation;
you need to compare two situations side by side, like series and parallel circuits;
you are revising, and need to scan quickly;
the exam will show you the same kind of figure, such as a ray diagram or a free-body diagram.
Use an interactive simulation when:
the idea is about how one quantity depends on another, such as range against launch angle;
the thing is invisible, like fields, charges or gas molecules;
the motion is too fast or slow to see, or has several things happening at once, like wave interference;
you want to test your own predictions.
Use video when:
you need to see a physical technique, such as how to read a vernier caliper or set up an experiment, which matches the large effect for procedural-motor skills.
A worked plan for one chapter: waves
Static first. Draw a labelled transverse wave: wavelength, amplitude, crest, trough. This is the vocabulary.
Simulation next. Change frequency and watch wavelength. Predict before each change. Then add a second source and look for where the waves cancel.
Back to static. Redraw the interference pattern from memory as a diagram you could reproduce in an exam.
Problems. Solve three numericals without the simulation.
That order uses each format for what it does best. For ready-made simulations, the Fermi Simulation Lab has interactive simulations for the ideas that are easier to see than to read. For the research behind learning from pictures and words, see our piece on Richard Mayer's multimedia learning principles, and for more on simulations, what PhET research found.
