"Web Watch" Column  

I have collected together here the pieces that I have prepared for APS's Forum on Education Newsletters. Items have been updated where appropriate since the original columns were written.

  • Change the Equation is a business group dedicated to improving STEM learning.
  • Frank Potter has some good links for grade school and college level physical science on his page, although I would caution that he is not formally affiliated with any educational institution.
  • Point your students to some profiles of working scientists and engineers on the science360 network.
  • Kyle Forinash has an interactive online textbook on the Physics of Sound for nonscience majors.
  • If you are a Mac user, as I am, you may like this list of science resources (mostly chemistry, but with some physics overlap).
  • A variation on the Prisoner's Dilemma allows the computer to essentially force your average score to be fixed, to rise, or to fall. If anyone sees you, tell them you're not playing a game, you're doing operations research....
  • Teaching intermediate mechanics? The old (1960) but great film on Frames of Reference is online.
  • NIH has an Office of Science Education (mostly life sciences, but still worth a browse).
  • Engineering Pathway is a collaboration of academia and industry linking to a variety of resources supporting technical education.
  • The Institute of Physics has a site devoted to Teaching Advanced Physics. (By "advanced" they mean topics in first-year university physics.)
  • Carleton hosts a discussion of Guided Discovery Problems. Then, in the left menu you will find links to all kinds of other pedagogical resources.
  • If you were to dig a hole straight though the center of the earth starting anywhere, where would you end up? Find out using this simulation.
  • Check out UBC's Physics Teaching for the 21st Century.
  • NASA has been trying for a long time to perfect solar sailing in space. Next year it will try to deploy a sail over 1000 square meters in size.
  • SPS has a site devoted to Careers Using Physics, including job resources and college & graduate school admissions.
  • The briefly titled Why-Sci website is a collection of snippets written by scientists to explain current research topics to the general public.
  • Sites with photos and descriptions of physics demos are often helpful to instructors teaching a new course. University of Florida's page is here.

Three more webpages devoted to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education to add to the lists in my previous two columns:



  • Puzzles are fun in physics. But mathematicians like to get in on the fun too. A lengthy list of mathematical articles related to physics puzzles is online at this verbose link.
  • If you haven't seen the "Scale of the Universe" animation created by two teenagers, check it out.
  • The Institute of Physics has a new webpage with content tailored for teachers online.
  • I have not yet tried using it, but there is a free tool to convert PDF documents into HTML pages.
  • My children found Science Buddies to be helpful in finding ideas for Science Fair projects.
  • Wolfram has hundreds of interactive physics demonstration animations.
  • What young person could resist videos about the physics of race car driving?
  • Three substantial American RadioWorks presentations in a series entitled "Don't Lecture Me" can be accessed.
  • If you teach intermediate-level physics with substantial calculus content, you'll likely find something useful here. Examples include a short derivation of the sum of the reciprocal integers squared, various kinds of average distances from the earth to the sun, and a bug problem.
  • There's an interesting website from a German PER group devoted to visualizing special and general relativity.
  • Westfall's biography of Newton has been strongly recommended to me. Put it on your summer reading list.

Last issue I began with a collection of webpages devoted to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education. Here are some more:



I'll start this issue's column with a focus on webpages devoted to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education:



  • The University of Nottingham has a series of sixty videos built around various symbols denoting key concepts in physics and astronomy. (To be fair, they invented a few nonstandard symbols, such as a sillouette of a drinking bird, in contrast to traditional symbols such as physical constants, the planets, and so on.) I think the coefficient of restitution demonstration (symbol "r" near the end of the list) of tiny balls bouncing between compartments on a vibrating platform is pretty nifty.
  • There has been lots of positive buzz about the seven videos of Feynman's Messenger lectures (delivered at Cornell University in 1964) on Microsoft's Project Tuva site.
  • Speaking of videos, there are a set of interesting chemistry and physics movies filmed in a Singapore enrichment classroom (with students present). The one demonstrating that a helium balloon sinks when it's placed inside a helium bag caught my eye, although aspects of it did not look totally safe. Use your own judgment if you decide to repeat those aspects!
  • There are also plenty of good textbooks appearing (for free!) on the web these days. For example, I learned a lot even from the first few pages of Tatum's Celestial Mechanics. For the intro physics course, you would probably want to take a look at the Light and Matter series. Looking for an advanced text for mechanics? Try Sussman and Wisdom's book. Need a reference handbook of advanced math functions? It's hard to beat Abramowitz and Stegun for comprehensiveness.
  • Do you have a question about how physics explains everyday phenomena? Well, Louis Bloomfield claims he can explain how everything works. I'll leave it to you to try and stump him, if you can!
  • John Denker has a very extensive web site about how airplanes fly. It includes not only the usual discussion of various common fallacies about wings, but plenty of practical physics for real pilots.
  • Lately I've enjoyed perusing some of the articles on the Inside Higher Ed website. Also check out BlueSci which is a science magazine written by Cambridge University students.
  • The Nobel prizes were announced recently. A complete description of the physics prizes are in chronological order.
  • My favorite physics blog is Built on Facts written by graduate student Matt Springer at Texas A&M. I like it because I share the author's interest in statistical mechanics, mathematical physics, and science fiction. It helps too that his posts are only a few paragraphs long, stick to a single topic at a time, and occur about 5 times a week. (Who has time for rambling posts several times a day?)
  • I also highly recommend the Advice column and the Blogs of the Chronicle of Higher Education. I make it a point to read them once a week, typically on Fridays. They are loaded with excellent commentary and opinions about all topics academic.
  • Speaking of Fridays, that's the day that the weekly issue of Bob Park's column What's New comes out. (You can subscribe.) Always provocative and often humorous, it usually consists of about 5 news items at the intersection of science and politics that I don't hear about anywhere else. Not recommended for the thin-skinned.
  • While none of us wants to subscribe to too many email listservers (you do have a life beyond the internet, don't you?) I strongly recommend the PHYS-L digest (make sure you sign up for the digest version, unless you want to receive 20 or more individual postings per day). It's a good source for asking about and discussing issues related to physics teaching. For academics in general, two other excellent resources are Tomorrow's Professor and The Irascible Professor, each of which emails out articles a couple of times of week related to the life of a professor.
  • A good site for readable summaries of recent scientific research can be found at Spotlight, which highlights important new articles in APS's physics journals.
  • Did you know you can solve indefinite integrals online (and more) using Mathematica?
  • Useful online columns of The Physics Teacher include the monthly Physics Challenges, Fermi Questions, and Figuring Physics.
  • Project Galileo at Harvard is a repository of materials based on Peer Instruction and Just-in-Time Teaching. A broader collection of online resources supporting teaching and learning in physics and astronomy is comPADRE.
  • You have signed up for free Educator Access to Cramster, haven't you? Many of your students are probably paying $9.95/month to get access to detailed solutions to textbook problems at this site. Have you looked to see what they can see?
  • Finally, there are some great physics movies on the web (other than on YouTube). Try the classic Frame of Reference, the complete 52-program set of The Mechanical Universe and Beyond, and The Video Encyclopedia of Physics Demonstrations.
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