Re: video series recommendation?

[Ari Hamalainen <aohamala@PENGER.HELSINKI.FI>]

Dan:

> If you have the $$ you should check out the ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHYSICS
> DEMONSTRATIONS (mentioned with contact info at
> http://www.psrc-online.org/demo_act/demo.html
> ).  They are very expensive but comprehensive. 25 disks; 600 demos).

We have a sample cassette of this series, and the demos sure look
good. But since now, my notion has been that they have the full
material available only in videodisk format. Videodisk players are
rare beasts in Finland, and spending $3000 on videos and another
$1500-2000 for the player seemed not a very good idea.

But now I found the page
http://www.sigcat.org/SIGCAT99/DVD_Theatre/Physics_DVD/body_physics_dv
d.htm
I says that the The Video Encyclopedia of Physics Demonstrations is
transferred to DVD format. I'll have to contact The Education Group
and ask about the availability and price. Then there is also the issue
of country codes of the DVD format.

If any users of the "Physics Demonstrations in ..." is reading this, I
would still like to see comments of this series, or recommedations of
other series of physics demonstration on videocassettes.

> I have
> no idea whether the PAL/NSTC conundrum is solved for videodisks or
not but
> they might have a PAL variant.

In fact, the PAL/NTSC problem has become much less of a issue at this
side of the pond as it used to be, because the ability to play NTSC
tapes is now a standard feature of most new PAL home VTRs.

Ari.Hamalainen@Helsinki.FI
Univ. of Helsinki, Department of Physics
http://www.helsinki.fi/~aohamala/