Donald Simanek's physics documents and links.
Physics Documents
The Museum of Unworkable Devices.
Perpetual motion machines treated as puzzles and paradoxes for analysis.
- A Brief Course in Classical Mechanics.
- Physics problems to challenge
insight. Elementary physics puzzles and paradoxes.
- Physics lecture demonstrations, a select list.
Physics Toys, Tricks and Teasers.
- Newton's Cradle, colliding
balls, exectuive pacifier, Newton's balls.
- Glossary of physics terms,
emphasizing words often misunderstood and misused.
Let's Clean Up our Physics Language.
- The Illustrated Dictionary of
Physics. What those strange words seem to mean.
The Dangers of Analogies.
Textbook analogies are usually wrong, incomplete, or misleading.
- Didaktikogenic Misconceptions in Physics.
Misconceptions that result from instruction.
- Tidal Misconceptions, exposing textbook errors in treating tidal forces and their effects.
Secrets your physics textbook didn't reveal.
Things you've always wondered about.
- Teaching scenarios:
electrostatics,
lenses,
images.
- Physics utility programs in BASIC.
Solve common elementary problems quickly.
- Thin lens ray tracing program.
A thin lens simulation which may be used as an instructional tool or
for self-study.
- Angels on a Pin, by Alexander Callandra.
A classic story illustrating different approaches to a physics problem.
- Scientific Urban Legends
and lies textbooks tell.
- History of Science Quiz. Textbook historical
sidebars often don't tell the whole story.
- Math Mayhem. Mathematical humor and
diversions.
- The Scientific Method.
What is science? What is Pseudoscience?
by Donald Simanek.
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Laboratory: Reports, Error Analysis
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Physics Links
Karl's Calculus Tutor. You can learn calculus.
- TIPTOP,
the Internet pilot to physics.
-
How Things Work. Ask Prof. Louis Bloomfield.
-
Usenet Physics FAQ. Answers to frequently-asked physics questions.
- Science Hobbyist.
Bill Beaty's Weird Science / Amateur Science Page.
Lots of practical information for hands-on physicists.
-
Science Misconceptions, collected By Bill Beaty.
-
The Bad Astronomy Page. Phil Plait's collection of misconceptions
about astronomy.
-
Bad Science. Alistair B. Fraser's comments on commonly heard
(but wrong) explananations of science questions.
-
Ben Goldacre's "Bad Science" columns from The Guardian.
-
Marilyn Vos Savant's Mistakes, by Herb Weiner.
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University of Oregon Virtual Laboratory [Java]
-
DC Physics and Math Tutor Services. Tutoring for a fee. But this site
also has some interesting free documents, including a listing of
textbook
errors.
- Dr. Alan Scott,
Links to astronomy, geology, physics demonstrations and experiments.
- Science News Online - The Weekly
Newsmagazine of Science.
- The Scientific American Magazine.
-
Robert Kern Curtis' PHYSICS STUFF.
A wealth of miscellaneous links and documents.
-
The Net Advance of Physics Homepage.
Review articles, reports, bibliographies.
- The American Physical Society.
- The American Institute of Physics.
-
Searchable index to the American Journal of Physics and
The Physics Teacher.
- CPS-AAPT.
Central Pennsylvania Section of the American Association of Physics
Teachers.
- PSUs
Science Journal.
- What's New
by Robert Park. News about physics, delivered with wry humor.
-
Educational resources for physics.
- Yahoo--Science:
Physics.
- Graduate
Programs in Physics.
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Astronomy links.
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