A couple of months ago I asked PHYS-Lers to respond to a short set of
questions which asked what software was commonly used in their classes or
departments. The survey is for publication in the Physics Courseware
Communicator. By the way, you can find the last couple of issues in pdf
format at the PCEP web site,
www2.ncsu.edu/ncsu/pams/physics/PCEP/www/PCEP.html
Obviously asking a computer-savvy group like PHYS-L will not give
representative data of all physics teachers, but I was curious to see what
this group was using for teaching physics.
The raw data are pasted in below, but here are my observations.
We are a diverse group, with many sofware packages used by just one or two
people.
There are some common threads. Lot of people use Excel and Graphical
Analysis for plotting and calculations, but more college sorts use the
former and high schools the latter.
Interactive Physics is pervasive, and it is used in lecture demo mode as
commonly as with student control.
Vernier MBL tools are quite common, and the Team Labs and PASCO products
were each only mentioned once. (Since so few college instructors mentioned
MBL tools, I wonder if my phrasing of the question led some to omit such
software.)
After that we have things like Mathcad, programming languages (all lumped
together) and homebrew applications all used equally often.
What is not used is as interesting as what is used: note that no one is
using optics ray tracing packages. There are three single mentions of
various video analysis packages, but they are not common. There is little
in the way of comprehensive (eg, ProSolv or tutorials) software used. While
the list has many simulations, they are not as commonly used as the general
purpose mathematical and data acquisition tools.
I did not count astronomy software (sorry, Paul); if I had no one astronomy
package would have had more than two users.
Any other comments?
JEG (note my new email address at the bottom; my old ISP folded suddenly)
(this table will be more readable if you toggle your mail reader into a
monospace font)
22 responses 12 college, 10 High School
13 MacOS 7 Win95 2 Win3.1
title High School College total
Excel 4 8 12
Interactive Physics 7 4 11
Vernier MBL 9 2 11
Graphical Analysis 8 2 10
custom apps 0 4 4
Mathcad 0 4 4
programming languages 0 4 4
Electric Field Hockey 2 1 3
netscape 2 1 3
RelLab 2 1 3
Claris Works (SS, WP) 2 0 2
CUPS series 0 2 2
EM Field 1 1 2
MacCurvfit 0 2 2
Maple 0 2 2
Matlab 0 2 2
Canvas 0 1 1
CBL 1 0 1
ChamberWorks 1 0 1
Cricket Graph 1 0 1
Eudora 0 1 1
Field Plotter 1 0 1
Good Stuff (Apple II) 1 0 1
Graphs and Tracks 1 0 1
Lab View 0 1 1
Mathematica 0 1 1
Power Amplifer (PASCO) 1 0 1
ProSolv 1 0 1
PSL (Team Labs) 0 1 1
Quattro Pro 0 1 1
Sigma Plot 0 1 1
STELLA 1 0 1
Teach to Learn 1 0 1
Videograph 1 0 1
Videopoint 1 0 1
World in Motion 0 1 1
===============
John E. Gastineau www.mindspring.com/~gastineau <-- NEW
900 B Ridgeway Ave. gastineau@mindspring.com <-- NEW
Morgantown WV 26505 (304) 296-1966