List of MicroSims

Interactive Micro Simulations to help students learn AP US Government and Politics fundamentals.

• AI Threat Taxonomy for Elections

  

  Interactive risk map where students classify AI-enabled election threats and evaluate the effectiveness of proposed countermeasures.

• Causal Loop Diagram Viewer

  A shared fullscreen viewer for browsing and editing the causal loop diagrams used across this textbook. Load any CLD file, drag nodes to reposition them, and explore feedback loops.

• Checks and Balances Among the Three Branches

  

  Identifies each constitutional check and explains how it prevents any single branch from accumulating too much power.

• Civil Rights Milestones — Legal and Legislative Timeline

  

  Chronological timeline of major civil rights milestones showing how legal decisions and legislation built upon each other.

• Cognitive Bias in Political Reasoning

  

  Scenario-based explorer where students classify political reasoning examples as confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, availability heuristic, in-group favoritism, or anchoring.

• Constitutional Amendment Timeline

  

  Interactive timeline identifying constitutional amendments and the historical context that drove each ratification.

• Corruption Perceptions Index — Western Democracies

  

  Horizontal bar chart comparing Corruption Perceptions Index scores across 30 Western democracies, with the United States highlighted.

• Electoral College — Interactive Map

  

  Interactive map explaining how the Electoral College works and how winner-take-all rules concentrate campaign attention in swing states.

• Enlightenment Ideas to American Institutions

  

  Connects key Enlightenment thinkers to the specific founding documents and constitutional structures they influenced.

• Federalism Evolution — From Dual to Cooperative to New

  

  Timeline showing how the balance of power between national and state governments has shifted across historical eras and what drove those changes.

• Gerrymandering — Packing and Cracking Visualized

  

  Grid-based visualization demonstrating how district boundary drawing affects election outcomes through packing and cracking strategies.

• Government Trust Trend (1958–2025)

  

  Interactive line chart showing how public trust in the U.S. federal government has changed from 1958 to 2025 based on Pew Research Center data.

• Great Compromise — The Two-Chamber Solution

  

  Explains how the Great Compromise resolved the conflict between large-state and small-state interests by creating a bicameral legislature.

• How a Bill Becomes a Law

  

  Step-by-step flowchart of the legislative process from introduction through presidential action and possible veto override.

• Iron Triangle vs. Issue Network — Structural Comparison

  

  Structural comparison of iron triangle and issue network models of policy influence applied to contemporary policy domains.

• Learning Graph Viewer

  

  View the concepts for this course as a directed graph with links showing dependencies between topics.

• Powers Comparison — Articles vs. Constitution

  

  Side-by-side comparison of the powers granted to the national government under the Articles of Confederation versus the Constitution.

• Presidential Power — Formal vs. Informal Sources

  

  Classify presidential powers as enumerated (constitutional) or informal (practice-based) and apply the distinction to novel scenarios.

• Spoils System vs. Merit System

  

  Timeline comparing the spoils and merit systems of federal employment and explaining why the Pendleton Act transition occurred.

• The Grants Spectrum — Categorical to Block

  

  Interactive slider contrasting categorical and block grants, exploring trade-offs between federal accountability and state flexibility.

• Three-Tier Federal Court Hierarchy

  

  Identifies the three tiers of the federal court system and explains the jurisdiction each tier exercises and how cases move between levels.

• Trust In Government Causal Loop Diagram

  

  Systems-thinking view of the forces eroding and restoring trust in the U.S. government across four reinforcing and balancing feedback loops.

• Understanding Polling — Margin of Error

  

  Interactive simulation for interpreting polling data including margin of error to distinguish statistically significant differences from statistical ties.