List of MicroSims¶
Interactive Micro Simulations to help students learn AP US Government and Politics fundamentals.
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AI Threat Taxonomy for Elections
Interactive risk map where students classify AI-enabled election threats and evaluate the effectiveness of proposed countermeasures.
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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.
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Civil Rights Milestones — Legal and Legislative Timeline
Chronological timeline of major civil rights milestones showing how legal decisions and legislation built upon each other.
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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.
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Constitutional Amendment Timeline
Interactive timeline identifying constitutional amendments and the historical context that drove each ratification.
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Corruption Perceptions Index — Western Democracies
Horizontal bar chart comparing Corruption Perceptions Index scores across 30 Western democracies, with the United States highlighted.
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Electoral College — Interactive Map
Interactive map explaining how the Electoral College works and how winner-take-all rules concentrate campaign attention in swing states.
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Enlightenment Ideas to American Institutions
Connects key Enlightenment thinkers to the specific founding documents and constitutional structures they influenced.
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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.
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Gerrymandering — Packing and Cracking Visualized
Grid-based visualization demonstrating how district boundary drawing affects election outcomes through packing and cracking strategies.
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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.
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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.
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Step-by-step flowchart of the legislative process from introduction through presidential action and possible veto override.
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Iron Triangle vs. Issue Network — Structural Comparison
Structural comparison of iron triangle and issue network models of policy influence applied to contemporary policy domains.
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View the concepts for this course as a directed graph with links showing dependencies between topics.
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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.
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Presidential Power — Formal vs. Informal Sources
Classify presidential powers as enumerated (constitutional) or informal (practice-based) and apply the distinction to novel scenarios.
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Spoils System vs. Merit System
Timeline comparing the spoils and merit systems of federal employment and explaining why the Pendleton Act transition occurred.
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The Grants Spectrum — Categorical to Block
Interactive slider contrasting categorical and block grants, exploring trade-offs between federal accountability and state flexibility.
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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.
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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.
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Understanding Polling — Margin of Error
Interactive simulation for interpreting polling data including margin of error to distinguish statistically significant differences from statistical ties.





















