Physlet and Open Source Physics
Newsletter
We are writing because you have expressed interest
in Physlets, attended one of our Physlet workshops,
have contributed to the Physlet Resource CD, or use
Physlets in your courses. This is the first Physlet
and Open Source Physics Newsletter.
Summer 2003 Physlet Workshops
New Physlet Physics Book
We have recently completed what we believe is a nice
complement to the Physlets: Teaching Physics with
Interactive Curricular Material book. Physlet Physics:
Interactive Illustrations, Explorations and Problems for
Introductory Physics (ISBN 0-13-101969-4), is an
interactive textbook designed to compliment any
introductory physics text. It has a collection of over 800
ready-to-run exercises spanning introductory physics.
There are several opportunities to attend a Physlet
curriculum development workshop this summer:
•
June 11-14: “HTML, Physlets, and TIPERs”
TYC (Two-Year College) Workshop at Joliet
Junior College in Joliet, IL (led by Mario
Belloni and Anne J. Cox).
•
July 30-31: “Developing Interactive Java-Based
Pedagogy in the Classroom,” 4 PTRA (Physical
Science Resource Agents) Workshops in
Madison, WI (led by Anne J. Cox and Mario
Belloni).
•
August 3: “Developing Interactive Java-Based
Pedagogy in the Classroom” Summer AAPT
Workshop in Madison, WI (led by Wolfgang
Christian, Mario Belloni, Anne J. Cox, Melissa
Dancy, and Thomas Colbert).
Future Workshops
At the January 2004 AAPT meeting in Miami
Florida, we will also be holding two workshops:
•
•
“Using Digital Libraries to Access and Share
Physlet-based Curricular Material” (led by
Bruce Mason, Mario Belloni, and Wolfgang
Christian).
While the aim of Physlets was to get instructors actively
creating Physlet-based curricular material, the aim of
Physlet Physics is to provide a resource for teaching that
enhances student learning and interactive engagement. At
the same time, Physlet Physics is a resource flexible enough
to be adapted to a variety of pedagogical strategies and local
environments. Every chapter of Physlet Physics contains
three quite different Physlet-based exercises:
Illustrations, Explorations and Problems.
•
•
“Teaching Special and General Relativity with
Computer Simulations” (led by Edwin Taylor,
Wolfgang Christian, and Mario Belloni).
For information on the summer workshops, or the
upcoming winter workshops, please visit the Physlet
workshop page at:
http://webphysics.davidson.edu/workshops
•
Illustrations are designed to demonstrate physical
concepts through a narrative and an animation.
Typical uses of Illustrations would include “reading”
assignments and classroom demonstrations.
Explorations are tutorial in nature. They provide
some hints or suggest problem-solving strategies to
students in working problems or understanding
concepts.
To aid in the assignment of the
Explorations, Exploration Worksheets (by Thomas
Colbert) are included on the Physlet Physics CD.
The Worksheets provide students with extra
structure to aid in the completion of the Exploration
and provide instructors with an easy way to assign
Explorations.
Problems are interactive versions of the kind of
exercises typically assigned for homework.
Instructors can bundle Physlet Physics with any
Prentice Hall introductory physics textbook (Giancoli,
Walker, Wilson-Buffa, and Hobson) for no additional
cost. Below are specific ISBNs for ordering bundles.
Giancoli, Physics 5e
0131050516
Giancoli, Physics 5e- Vol 1
0131050494
Giancoli, Physics 5e- Vol 2
0131050508
Walker, Physics 2e
0131780565
Walker, Physics 2e- Vol 1
0131780573
Walker, Physics 2e- Vol 2
0131780581
Wilson, College Physics 5e
013178059X
Wilson, College Physics 5e- Vol 1
0131780603
Wilson, College Physics 5e- Vol 2
0131052098
Walker, Physics 1e
0131780611
Giancoli, Physics for SE 3e
013143845X
Giancoli, Physics for SE 3e- Extended
0131438468
Hobson, Physics 3e
0131067397
Physlets Go International
Changes to the Java code within Physlets now makes
them easier to use in languages other than English. The
addition of resource files allows greater flexibility with
built-in text time the time display in Animator. For
example, we can use the Animator Physlet in Spanish by
copying the resource file, animator_es.rc, to the
directory containing the jar files and adding the
following parameter to the applet tag in the html page.
<param name="Resources" value="animator_es.rc">
Resource files, which are just text files, for Spanish and
German, are already available for most Physlets.
You can tour the preface and first two chapters of
Physlet Physics at:
http://webphysics.davidson.edu/physlet_resources/
physlet_physics
The Physlet Physics Instructor’s Guide by Anne J. Cox
and Melissa Dancy will also be available.
New Physlet Quantum Mechanics Book
The release of Physlet
Quantum Mechanics, an
interactive
textbook
designed to compliment
any quantum mechanics
text, is slated for April
2004. Physlet Quantum
Mechanics has the same
pedagogical features as
Physlet Physics and focuses on the visualization and the
time development of wave functions in 1-, 2-, and 3dimensional problems.
Contact Mario Belloni if you would like to review/beta
test this material in your fall 2003 classes.
Foreign Language Physlet books
¿Habla español? Well, if you or your students do, you
can use Physlets (or Fislets). Early in 2004, the book
Fislets: Enseñanza de la Física con Material
Interactivo, by Francisco Esquembre, Ernesto Martín,
Wolfgang Christian and Mario Belloni, will be available
(ISBN: 84-205-3781-0).
We are working with a
coauthor on a German Physlets book as well.
New Jar Files Available
You should download the latest jar files from the
Physlets site:
http://webphysics.davidson.edu/Applets/jars/
These new files provide improved stability with the
latest browsers and fix a number of small bugs. Scripts
are 100% compatible with previous versions but you
must replace BOTH the tools library (STools4.jar) and
applet specific file for everything to work properly.
Open Source Physics
Open Source Physics Workshops
Open Source Physics
With support from the National Science Foundation
(DUE-0126439) and as part of the Open-Source Physics
Education project, we will conduct a series of summer
workshops for programmers wishing to adopt the Open
Source Physics library for their own projects.
http://www.opensourcephysics.org
is a National Science Foundation-funded curriculum
development project that seeks to develop and
distribute a code library, programs, and examples of
computer-based interactive curricular material. The
project will create and make available a large
number of ready-to-run Java simulations for
education using the GNU open source model for
code distribution. The OSP project also maintains a
website that serves as an in-depth guide to the tools,
philosophy, and programs developed for this project.
While the workshops for summer 2003 are filled, we
will be offering the workshops again at Eckerd College
in St. Petersburg, Florida during the summer of 2004
(led by Wolfgang Christian, Anne J. Cox, and Mario
Belloni). For more information about this and other
workshops visit the Physlet workshop page at:
http://webphysics.davidson.edu/workshops
Physlet Resource CD
We are in the process of collecting material for the next
release of the Physlet Resource CD at the 2003 Summer
AAPT meeting. We will send you a complementary CD
in return for permission to use your material on the CD.
Physlet List Serve (PHYSLET-L)
General relativity simulation of light paths near a black hole.
Although Physlets are written in Java, they are not
open source. In fact, we often receive requests for
Physlet source code but have declined to distribute
this code. Physlets are compiled Java applets that
are embedded into html pages and controlled using
JavaScript. This paradigm works well for generalpurpose programs such as a Newton's law
simulation, but fails for more sophisticated one-of-akind simulations that require advanced disciplinespecific expertise. Users and developers of these
types of programs often have specialized curricular
needs that can only be addressed by having access to
the source code. However, anyone who has ever
written a program in Java knows that writing code
for opening windows and creating buttons, text
fields, and graphs can be tedious and time
consuming. Moreover, it is not in the spirit of objectoriented programming to rewrite these methods for
each application or applet that is developed. The
Open Source Physics project solves this problem by
providing a consistent object-oriented library of Java
components for anyone wishing to write their own
simulation programs.
For over a year now the Physlet list serve, PHYSLET-L,
has been an online resource devoted to Physlet
technology and pedagogy. The discussion list currently
has 185 members and is run by Aaron Titus at High
Point University.
To learn more about the list serve or to join, go to the
Physlets Web page at:
http://webphysics.davidson.edu/applets/applets.html
and follow the link for the list serve.
We hope this first Physlet and Open Source Physics
Newsletter was informative. For more information visit
the Physlet Web page or feel free to contact us directly.
Best regards,
Wolfgang Christian
wochristian@davidson.edu
Mario Belloni
mabelloni@davidson.edu