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Re: Physics education via the internet?



So many of the things that computers are used for in the science
classroom (as opposed to data collection within the laboratory) are
designed to simulate or illustrate. This is, I feel, on of the
difficulties facing today's students they may be information rich, but
they are experience poor. While Interactive Physics may allow you to
repeat a thousand different trials varying all parameters and noting the
outcome - how many of your students haven't a clue as to how to string a
pulley system in the first place. Maybe I am a dinosaur and in the
modern world people won't need to know how to manipulate real materials,
but (other than e-mail or some forms of research) I see this push to
"net-alize" physics as just increasing this experience vs. exposure gap.

Greg Kifer

Since the issue of simulations has reared it head once again, let me repeat
what I said some time back regarding that topic, which involves computers,
but not necessaarily the internet. Any teacher who attempts to teach
physics using only computer simulations for "experience" is doing his or
her students a serious disservice. As has been well pointed out on this
list, simulations alone do not substitute for the real thing (on the other
hand, NASA and the airlines have gotten a lot of mileage out of simulations
as training devices for people who haven't seen the real thing yet). But it
is just as clear that our students do not have the time or the equipment to
do every possible experiement, so a mixing of real experiments and
simulations is an excellent way to broaden the experience of the students
with a modest expenditure of both time and resources. Simulations can be
used two ways: 1) extend the experimental parameters beyond what can be
conveniently done in the lab, and 2) design the experiment on the simulator
and then build it and carry it out in the lab. Both aspects will increase
the students' respect for and understanding of the real world.

But what does the issue of simulation have to do with the internet, which
is what this thread was all about in the first place? Can we access any of
NASA's simulators that way? Are their simulators resident on the internet
that cannot be downloaded to local computers?

********************************************************************************
Hugh Haskell
<mailto://haskell@odie.ncssm.edu>
(please reply to this address rather than the originating address)

Instructor of Physics, NC School of Science and Mathematics
P. O. Box 2418, Durham, NC 27715
(919) 286-3366

The box said "Requires Windows 95 or better." So I bought a Macintosh.
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