Group16 - easyphysicsR

[Mengjun74]

---

name: easyphysicsR
about: A package with useful physics formulas to make physics easy and fun for users! It uses four functions to easily calculate four classic physics theories.

---

Submitting Author Name: Mengjun Chen, Yaou Hu, Nikita Susan Easow, Revathy Ponnambalam
Submitting Author Github Handle: @YHuUBC, @Mengjun74, @revathyponn, @nik11susan
Repository: https://github.com/UBC-MDS/easyphysicsR
Version submitted:
Submission type: Standard
Reviewers: TBD

Archive: TBD
Version accepted: TBD
Language: R

• Paste the full DESCRIPTION file inside a code block below:

Package: easyphysicsR
Title: What the Package Does (One Line, Title Case)
Version: 0.0.0.9000
Authors@R: 
    person("Revathy ", "Ponnambalam", , "[email protected]", role = c("aut", "cre"))
    person("Nikita Susan", "Easow", , "[email protected]", role = c("aut", "cre"))
    person("Yaou", "Hu", , "[email protected]", role = c("aut", "cre"))
    person("Mengjun", "Chen", , "[email protected]", role = c("aut", "cre"))
Description: A package with four useful physics formulas 
    to make physics easy and fun for users!
Depends:
    R (>= 3.2.2)
License: MIT + file LICENSE
Encoding: UTF-8
Roxygen: list(markdown = TRUE)
RoxygenNote: 7.2.3
Suggests: 
    testthat (>= 3.0.0)
Config/testthat/edition: 3
Imports:
    tidyverse,
    ggplot2,
    tibble,
    rlang,
    dplyr

Scope

• Please indicate which category or categories from our package fit policies this package falls under: (Please check an appropriate box below. If you are unsure, we suggest you make a pre-submission inquiry.):

  • data retrieval
  • data extraction
  • data munging
  • data deposition
    • data validation and testing
  • workflow automation
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  • citation management and bibliometrics
  • scientific software wrappers
  • field and lab reproducibility tools
  • database software bindings
  • geospatial data
  • text analysis

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• Who is the target audience and what are scientific applications of this package?

• Are there other R packages that accomplish the same thing? If so, how does yours differ or meet our criteria for best-in-category?

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Confirm each of the following by checking the box.

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This package:

• does not violate the Terms of Service of any service it interacts with.
• has a CRAN and OSI accepted license.
• contains a README with instructions for installing the development version.
• includes documentation with examples for all functions, created with roxygen2.
• contains a vignette with examples of its essential functions and uses.
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[mozhao0331]

Package Review

Please check off boxes as applicable, and elaborate in comments below. Your review is not limited to these topics, as described in the reviewer guide

• Briefly describe any working relationship you have (had) with the package authors.
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Documentation

The package includes all the following forms of documentation:

• A statement of need: clearly stating problems the software is designed to solve and its target audience in README
• Installation instructions: for the development version of package and any non-standard dependencies in README
• Vignette(s): demonstrating major functionality that runs successfully locally
• Function Documentation: for all exported functions
• Examples: (that run successfully locally) for all exported functions
• Community guidelines: including contribution guidelines in the README or CONTRIBUTING, and DESCRIPTION with URL, BugReports and Maintainer (which may be autogenerated via Authors@R).

Functionality

• Installation: Installation succeeds as documented.
• Functionality: Any functional claims of the software been confirmed.
• Performance: Any performance claims of the software been confirmed.
• Automated tests: Unit tests cover essential functions of the package and a reasonable range of inputs and conditions. All tests pass on the local machine.
• Packaging guidelines: The package conforms to the rOpenSci packaging guidelines.

Estimated hours spent reviewing: 1 hour

• Should the author(s) deem it appropriate, I agree to be acknowledged as a package reviewer ("rev" role) in the package DESCRIPTION file.

---

Review Comments

• I feel like some of the functions are a little bit easy, you may consider the question about why the customers want to use your package, By not just type of the function by themselves. For example, "m*h*g" just calculate a number. May be you should consider to have more returns or do more things.
• The plot of the function `freefall` display seven points, it is quite hard for me to read the values (time of the free fall). May be a bar chart or just numeric display will make it more clear. For example, if I input a very large value for g, I can only know on the graph it is very close to zero.
• In the gravitational_energy.R, you may need to indicate the parameter "g" default value.
• In the same file, since you are checking the input type and range three times. You may want to have a helper function to make the code "dry".
• You do not need to library(tidyverse) inside the function. You have already imported the required packages. You miss two tests for your functions
• It is a good habit to write in-line comments for each step of the function. In the files gravitational_energy.R, kinetic_energy.R, and static_friction_ground.R, you may want to explain what you are testing, and what you are building.

[ashwin2507]

Package Review

Please check off boxes as applicable, and elaborate in comments below. Your review is not limited to these topics, as described in the reviewer guide

• Briefly describe any working relationship you have (had) with the package authors.
• As the reviewer I confirm that there are no conflicts of interest for me to review this work (if you are unsure whether you are in conflict, please speak to your editor before starting your review).

Documentation

The package includes all the following forms of documentation:

• A statement of need: clearly stating problems the software is designed to solve and its target audience in README
• Installation instructions: for the development version of package and any non-standard dependencies in README
• Vignette(s): demonstrating major functionality that runs successfully locally
• Function Documentation: for all exported functions
• Examples: (that run successfully locally) for all exported functions
• Community guidelines: including contribution guidelines in the README or CONTRIBUTING, and DESCRIPTION with URL, BugReports and Maintainer (which may be autogenerated via Authors@R).

Functionality

• Installation: Installation succeeds as documented.
• Functionality: Any functional claims of the software been confirmed.
• Performance: Any performance claims of the software been confirmed.
• Automated tests: Unit tests cover essential functions of the package and a reasonable range of inputs and conditions. All tests pass on the local machine.
• Packaging guidelines: The package conforms to the rOpenSci packaging guidelines.

Estimated hours spent reviewing:

• Should the author(s) deem it appropriate, I agree to be acknowledged as a package reviewer ("rev" role) in the package DESCRIPTION file.

---

Review Comments

• Overall the package is excellent and well documented, the functions could be more productive instead of just plugging in formulas and giving out the result as the main goal is educating people about physics concepts.
• Adding better visual plots could enhance the functionality of this package and also increase the user base of this package.
• Really liked the concept of this package, could have added advanced physics concepts for which people do want a package to calculate it for them.
• Comments inside the function would be more helpful when checking the datatypes in gravitational_energy.R to understand for code review.
• The default value of g inside the gravitational_energy.R function could be specified in the documentation.

[Natalie-cho]

Package Review

Please check off boxes as applicable, and elaborate in comments below. Your review is not limited to these topics, as described in the reviewer guide

• Briefly describe any working relationship you have (had) with the package authors.
• As the reviewer I confirm that there are no conflicts of interest for me to review this work (if you are unsure whether you are in conflict, please speak to your editor before starting your review).

Documentation

The package includes all the following forms of documentation:

• A statement of need: clearly stating problems the software is designed to solve and its target audience in README
• Installation instructions: for the development version of package and any non-standard dependencies in README
• Vignette(s): demonstrating major functionality that runs successfully locally
• Function Documentation: for all exported functions
• Examples: (that run successfully locally) for all exported functions
• Community guidelines: including contribution guidelines in the README or CONTRIBUTING, and DESCRIPTION with URL, BugReports and Maintainer (which may be autogenerated via Authors@R).

Functionality

• Installation: Installation succeeds as documented.
• Functionality: Any functional claims of the software been confirmed.
• Performance: Any performance claims of the software been confirmed.
• Automated tests: Unit tests cover essential functions of the package and a reasonable range of inputs and conditions. All tests pass on the local machine.
• Packaging guidelines: The package conforms to the rOpenSci packaging guidelines.

Estimated hours spent reviewing:

• Should the author(s) deem it appropriate, I agree to be acknowledged as a package reviewer ("rev" role) in the package DESCRIPTION file.

---

Review Comments

• I would suggest editing the code block in your Usage section to remove examples that call the package name prior to function to avoid redundancy (ex. easyphysics::freefall(...)). Since the code block includes loading the package at the start, there is no need to include function calls that call for the package.
• As a side note, is there a reason why the function static_friction_ground produces a graph for the python package but not for the R package? Consider adding this functionality to the R package for completeness

[shaunhutch]

Package Review

Please check off boxes as applicable, and elaborate in comments below. Your review is not limited to these topics, as described in the reviewer guide

• Briefly describe any working relationship you have (had) with the package authors.
• As the reviewer I confirm that there are no conflicts of interest for me to review this work (if you are unsure whether you are in conflict, please speak to your editor before starting your review).

Documentation

The package includes all the following forms of documentation:

• A statement of need: clearly stating problems the software is designed to solve and its target audience in README
• Installation instructions: for the development version of package and any non-standard dependencies in README
• Vignette(s): demonstrating major functionality that runs successfully locally
• Function Documentation: for all exported functions
• Examples: (that run successfully locally) for all exported functions
• Community guidelines: including contribution guidelines in the README or CONTRIBUTING, and DESCRIPTION with URL, BugReports and Maintainer (which may be autogenerated via Authors@R).

Functionality

• Installation: Installation succeeds as documented.
• Functionality: Any functional claims of the software been confirmed.
• Performance: Any performance claims of the software been confirmed.
• Automated tests: Unit tests cover essential functions of the package and a reasonable range of inputs and conditions. All tests pass on the local machine.
• Packaging guidelines: The package conforms to the rOpenSci packaging guidelines.

Estimated hours spent reviewing: 1 hour

• Should the author(s) deem it appropriate, I agree to be acknowledged as a package reviewer ("rev" role) in the package DESCRIPTION file.

---

Review Comments

• Great job on the package, I was able to download the package and run each of the functions. A 90% Code coverage is good!
• Overall an interesting and well-done package, I feel as though to make the package easier to understand it helps to have visualizations as you do with the freefall function. However, you do not have any other visualizations for your other functions. I think that this would help everyone learning physics to understand these topics easier.
• In some of your functions gravity was set as 9.8, whereas in gravitational_energy it was 9.80665. It would be a good thing to keep this consistent, especially for teaching physics to those without background knowledge.
• In the usage section it could be useful to write the formulas in Latex for ease of readability. Forcumas like KE = 1/2mv^2 would look better as $KE = 1/2mv^2$.
• It would be nice to have a link to the vignettes in the README.md file. While you can access it through the GitHub Pages, it would be easier for users to find it if you could include a link instead of having to search for it.

Overall great work on the package, it was interesting to learn more about this package in the R environment.