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Re: [Phys-l] Interactive Physics -- liberation?



I've never had or used Interactive Physics, but this sounds fairly similar to OpenSource Physics.
http://www.opensourcephysics.org/

Does this do what the group is looking for?

Paul Lulai
Physics Teacher
St Anthony Village S.H.
3303 33rd Ave NE
St Anthony Village, MN 55418

612-706-1146
plulai@stanthony.k12.mn.us
http://www.stanthony.k12.mn.us/hsscience/ ;

-----Original Message-----
From: phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu [mailto:phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu] On Behalf Of John Denker
Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2011 1:52 PM
To: Forum for Physics Educators
Subject: [Phys-l] Interactive Physics -- liberation?

On 12/06/2011 12:32 PM, Philip Keller wrote:
I didn't already have it I'd spend a good chunk of a year's supply
budget to get at least one copy for my teacher station.


On 12/05/2011 03:54 PM, John Mallinckrodt wrote:
Despite the fact that IP was introduced more than twenty years ago,
it has, IMO, never been equalled, let alone surpassed for on-the-fly
creation of mechanics-based simulations.

Somebody ought to write a free, open-source program to do such simulations.

Specific suggestion: For the college folks on the list: Go talk to the folks in the computer science department. They are (or should be) always looking for senior-thesis projects and master's projects.

I haven't looked into it at all, but I suspect implementing some sort of libre-IP is not a hard problem, given all the tools that are available nowadays. One approach might be to start with something like STEP
http://edu.kde.org/step/
and teach it to behave more like IP.

If you can find a student who is double majoring in physics and computers, so much the better.

Motivation for the student: Having something like this on a résumé will attract lots of favorable attention from employers......

For something like this, that is physics-related and computer-related and education-infrastructure-related, the NSF "should" be falling all over themselves to support it. I don't guarantee that they will do so, but it's worth a shot.
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