The Feynman
Lectures on Physics,by Richard P. Feynman,
Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands
Essential
Mathematica for Students of Science,Tutorial
Approach to Mastery of Mathematica by James J. Kelly,
Department of
Physics, University of
Maryland
The American
Institute of Physics History of Physics List of Exhibits
Teaching
Physics with the Physics Suite by Edward F.
Redish
Physics
Problem-Solving Strategies
Solving
Problems in Physics by Dan Styer of the Oberlin
College Physics Department
Teaching
Introductory Physics Through Problem Solving by Ken Heller of
the University of Minnisota School of Physics and Astronomy
Computer
Algebra Programs
Maxima
Freeware
Quickmath
On-Line
Data
Analysis and Uncertainty Calculations
The University of Toronto Chemistry
Department has posted a well-written Stats
Tutorial.
Textbook Revolution
A site started by Jason Turgeon with links to free
on-line textbooks.
Energy:
What it IS, What it is NOT, and How We Know
A web page with a bunch of Flash Movies by
Walter Scheider
Physics
Education Technology (PhET)
University of Colorado at Boulder
physics simulation applets.
Interactive
Experiments in Gravity
This site of John Walker, coauthor of AutoCad, shows how to construct a
device for demonstrating the gravitational force of attraction between
objects that you can hold in your hand and time-lapse videos of the
apparatus in operation. At the same site there is an applet
that allows you to explore orbital motion.
Circuit
Simulator
John Falstad has created a sophisticated circuit simulator
java applet that allows you to build your own simulated
circuits. It depicts current as dots moving about the circuit
in the direction of conventional current. If you prefer
current to be depicted as dots moving in the direction of electron
flow, you'll probably want to use the Circuit Construction
Kit at the University of Colorado Physics
Education Technology (PhET) project web site.
The
Intuitor Basic Physics Savvy Quiz
A conceptual physics quiz consisting of
40 true/false questions. While you might think of
a quiz as an evaluation tool, this one is an excellent
learning tool because of the thoroughness of the feedback provided for
each question (and because of the quality of the
questions themselves). The feedback becomes available after
you submit your answers.
Geophysical
Properties
g
at Your Latitude and Longitude made
available by the U.S. National
Geodetic Survey is a calculator of the magnitude of
the acceleration (relative to the surface of the earth) of an
object in freefall (neglecting force of air) near the surface
of the earth at a location having the coordinates you
enter. (Leave the elevation blank if you don't know it and
the calculator will provide the elevation at the surface
too.) If you don't already have them, you can obtain the
coordinates and elevation of the location of interest by means of the
maps at http://www.topozone.com.
With the coordinates in hand, you can also get the properties of the
earth's magnetic field at the same point on the
earth by visiting the Compute Earth's Magnetic Field Values calculator made
available by the United States National Geophysical Data Center.
NIST Reference on
Constants, Units, and Uncertainty
Information on SI units and
related topics from the United States National Institute of Standards
and Technology.
Physics
Documents by John S. Denker
A collection of explanations which
in most cases were written as answers to questions posted on PHYS-L,
a list serve for physics educators.
Donald
Simanek's Physics
Abused Web Page
A collection of documents written by Donald
Simanek on physics misconceptions and incorrect explanations along with
his own explanations and links to web sites with similar information.
University
of Minnesota Physics Education Research and Development
Some of the best
resources for learning and teaching physics can be found at the web
sites of groups that do research into how people learn physics and
research on successful methods of teaching physics. The University of Minnesota Physics Education Research
and Development
web site includes information on what works in physics education,
useful resources for teaching your own course (e.g. the Context Rich
Problems), and a comprehensive set of links to other physics education
research web pages.
Physics
Tutorials by James L. Hunt, Professor Emeritus,
University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada
Professor Hunt has created a of HTML-coded physics tutorials.
The set, Physics Tutorials,
is designed to enhance the user's introductory-physics-related
mathematical skills as well as the user's understanding of some
introductory physics concepts.
Physics Books
by Benjamin Crowell
Dr. Benjamin Crowell of
Fullerton College has written three excellent introductory physics
textbooks, all of which are available on-line in pdf (and other
formats). He's also been a big promoter of free on-line books written
by other people (check out his on-line book review site,
The Assayer ). By means of his work, Dr. Crowell inspired me to
write Calculus-Based Physics, and, through email communication, Dr.
Crowell gave me the encouragement and information I needed to release
it under a Creative Commons license.Here is a page with links to the books he
wrote: Light and Matter
Peer
Instruction Materials, Eric Mazur, Harvard University
I consider myself to be an
extreme user of Eric Mazur's peer tutoring method. To me, the heart of
the method is the execution of the reading assignment, by the students,
prior to class. (In fact, I wrote my book in an attempt to maximize the
reading of assigned textual material by my students. My thinking was,
the shorter I could make a reading assignment, subject to the condition
that it still contained the information I wanted the students to get
out of it, the more likely the students would be to complete the
reading assignment. I teach at a quality liberal arts college and the
anecdotal evidence I have indicates that my students are getting more
than 200 pages per week in reading assignments outside of physics.)
Except for the occasional pop no-quiz, I start each class with a quiz.
I aim for two questions that anybody who does a reasonably thorough job
on the reading assignment will answer correctly, and one that requires
application of the concepts covered by the reading assignment. After
the quiz, I display a multiple choice question on a screen at the front
of the room. The students respond, all at once, either by means of
colored index cards, or, more recently, by means of the infrared
transmitters of a classroom response system. What we do in class prior
to the next question (discussion with peers, explanation of reasoning
by a student, clarification of the concepts by me, a second opportunity
for students to answer the same question, or nothing) depends on the
responses. We deal with such multiple choice questions, one after
another, until we run out of time. I make up some of the questions and
the others are concept tests that come with Peer Instruction: A User's Manual, by Eric Mazur.
Other Free
Textbooks
Go to Tech
books for free and
click on the Science tab to see a strong list of free science and
engineering books. James Nearing's Mathematical Tools for Physics looks
particularly useful to me.
Sonoma State University Department of Physics and Astronomy
Dr. Joseph Tenn of the Sonoma State University Department of Phyiscs
and Astronomy hosts a series of invited talks at Sonoma
State and is now making them available in streaming video at
What Physicists Do . At that site, the talks can be viewed
live at 4 pm (Pacific Time) on Mondays during the academic
year, or after the presentation. I recommend the
Feb. 06, 2006 talk SEEING THE INVISIBLES:
THE CHALLENGE TO PARTICLE PHYSICS IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM by
Prof. Hitoshi Murayama.
SciLab
The computer
program SciLab provides an interpreted programming environment similar
to MatLab, but SciLab is free. It is useful for
solving introductory physics problems for which either the analytic
solution is beyond the scope of the course, or, there is no
analytic solution. (Finding the trajectory of an object for
which air resistance is not negligible would fall into this
category.) The quick and easy generation of graphs in SciLab
is particularly valuable.
The
Andes Physics Tutor
The
Andes Physics Tutor is a free on-line homework system in
which students construct diagrams, select the applicable concept and
otherwise work out the solutions to physics problems with feedback at
every step.
|