Physlets Teaching Physics With Interactive Curricular Material

Preface The World Wide Web makes it possible to transmit multimedia-enhanced documents interactively in a platform-independent fashion using Hypertext Markup Language, html. These documents are prepared and transmitted as text documents and can, therefore, be prepared with any text editor. Yet the html browser displays full multimedia information, including animated text, graphics, video, and sound. The recent introduction of the Java programming language by Sun Microsystems makes it possible to add platform-independent programs to this multimedia stew. Java accomplishes this trick by specifying a relatively simple Virtual Machine (VM), which can be implemented on any computer architecture (i.e., UNIX, Macintosh, or Windows Meyer 1997)). Although this VM does not provide as rich a set of tools as the native operating system, the virtual machine can have a user interface with buttons, a drawing canvas, and other graphical elements. There may be virtue in simplicity. Small, platform-indepen4ent programs are well suited for instructional purposes such as homework problems. These applets can be embedded directly into html documents and can interact with the user. This is accomplished with a scripting language such as JavaScript. We refer to the Java applets written at Davidson College for physics pedagogy as Physlets. This book demonstrates the use of Physlets in conjunction with JavaScript to deliver a wide variety of Web-based interactive physics activities. The goal of this book is to enable you to incorporate Physlets in your instruction, whether you are a relative Web novice or are ready to write pages of JavaScript. Clearly, this is more than just a technical how-to book; we hope to give you some ideas about the new possibilities that Physlets offer. It often happens that the most valuable applications of new technologies are new teaching paradigms. But it takes considerable time and effort for these paradigms to become apparent. The examples presented in this book and on the accompanying CD are designed to make the transition to using Physlets quick and easy. This text provides examples of classroom demonstrations, traditional and Just-in-Time Teaching homework problems, pre- and post-laboratory exercises, and interactive engagement activities. Of course, if you already know how you want to use Physlets, you may turn to Part Three of this book, a reference to Physlet methods, and start scripting. But even hard-core programmers will appreciate the ease with which a preexisting Physlet problem, described in Part Two and available on the CD, can be modified for use in a new context. CONTENTS Part One gives an overview of the pedagogy and the technology. After a brief introduction ("What Is a Physlet?"), we will argue that new methods are needed in the teaching of physics. If you already believe this to be true, you may feel free to skim Chapter 2 ("JiTT and Physlets," by Evelyn Patterson and Gregor Novak) and Chapter 3 ("PER and Physlets," by Aaron Titus and Melissa Dancy). In subsequent chapters, we will describe the underlying technology and how to install Physlets locally on your desktop or Web server. The core technology of Java and JavaScript is discussed in Chapter 5. Since Physlets are flexible and users can write their own problems, Chapter 6 gives a tutorial on how to script three of the most used Physlets,Animator, Efield,andDataGraph. In Part Two, we give examples of curricular material that can be used as in-class exercises and homework problems in introductory and advance physics courses. There are over 100 of these examples in Part Two. These examples and an additional 80 problems are available on individual html pages on the CD that accompanies this book. The Additional Resources portion of the CD contains even more examples of curricular material from other institutions. Part Three provides resources for instructors who are interested in scripting bChristian, Wolfgang is the author of 'Physlets Teaching Physics With Interactive Curricular Material' with ISBN 9780130293411 and ISBN 0130293415.