PhET Physics Simulations

From site:  The Physics Education Technology (PhET) project is an ongoing effort to provide an extensive suite of simulations for teaching and learning physics and chemistry and to make these resources both freely available from the PhET website and easy to incorporate into classrooms.

The simulations are animated, interactive, and game-like environments in which students learn through exploration. In these simulations, we emphasize the connections between real life phenomena and the underlying science and seek to make the visual and conceptual models that expert physicists use accessible to students.

Windows to the Universe: Fundamental Physics

From site:  Physics is the study of basic properties, materials, and forces in our Universe. Our new physics section will start off with some background material about space, time, and matter. It will also include sections on mechanics, electricity and magnetism, thermal physics, atomic physics and particle physics, and tools for math and science (vectors, coordinate systems, units of measurement, etc.).

Physics: An Overview of NSF Research

From site:  Physics begins with the everyday physical world around us—the blue of the sky, the colors of the rainbow, the fall of an apple, the motions of the moon. What’s happening here? Why do things work this way?

Physics goes on to give us many answers—along with a rich and detailed account of things like force, motion, gravity, heat, light, electricity and magnetism: the mechanisms that actually give rise to the everyday world.

But of course, physics doesn’t end there. Once you start asking about the fall of an apple, there’s no turning back. Each question leads to the next, until you finally find yourself probing into the deepest secrets of matter, energy, space—even time itself. What are they? How do they really work? And where is the deep, unifying principle that can help us truly understand them?

IPPEX – Plasma Physics

From site:  IPPEX uses interactive multimedia over the World Wide Web to engage students in formulating questions and creating meaning from their own experiences. Rather than passively learning facts and following routine instructions, students solve problems and learn how to find information and solutions in complex, non-linear material (as actual scientists must). Some activities are similar to a video game or a CD-ROM presentation. Abstract concepts, such as nuclear energy, are developed from concrete experience and examples from everyday life.

Engaging background material on energy, matter, electricity, magnetism and the laws of motion is woven into a scenario that motivates today’s plasma scientists: “By better understanding the forces of the universe we can harness the energy of the sun and stars to improve human life in an environmentally responsible way.”

Students create a knowledge base that helps them operate a virtual tokamak (a fusion energy device) and analyze data from the actual experiment (which may have been acquired just minutes before) in the same way that professional physicists do.

Amusement Park Physics

Learn how a roller coaster works, then use your physics skills in calculating height, mass and velocity to design your own roller coaster.

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