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[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.