  This study investigates a group of high school students in a physics
classroom interacting with a computer simulation that simulates the
electrostatic interaction as a hockey game, the Electric Field Hockey. The
activity featured in this study took place prior to the students receiving
formal instruction about the electric field. The learning goal was to allow
students to explore the simulated electrostatic phenomena. The study asks the
following research question: How do high school students collectively explore
simulated electrostatic phenomena while interacting with the Electric Field
Hockey computer simulation during a classroom activity? In this paper, through
careful analysis of classroom videos, I present a case study about the group
mentioned above. The results show that high school students encountered and
dealt with multiple types of tensions in the activity and explored the
electrostatic phenomena simulated by the Electric Field Hockey. Students
prioritized exploring different types of phenomena when they encountered
different types of tensions. Based on the findings I propose: When carrying out
an activity with a novel educational tool, a teacher can attend to, and jump in
at appropriate points, when tensions arises thus to orient students to explore
the simulated physical phenomena in more productive ways.
