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Gathering Point for Physics Service Courses

An interactive numerical help center will be established for freshman and sophomore engineering physics and pre-medical physics courses. We will use the facility to continue our development of software simulations, which requires the high performance of the modern desktop to provide a visually compelling, quantitative environment for students to develop and test their understanding of physics. The facility will also act as a center for the use and distribution of commercial educational software, using the anything-anytime-anywhere (a³) infrastructure provided as part of this proposal.

Each semester we teach introductory physics to over a thousand engineering students, and a comparable number of biological sciences and pre-medical students. To accomplish this, we have developed extensive expertise in producing numerically-intensive software modules for teaching physics, which use innovative technologies and make serious demands on modern desktop workstations. The initial effort has gelled into a new text, Simulations for Solid State Physics, incorporating fourteen simulation modules covering all aspects of crystals, electron transport, and lattice vibrations. Similar modules have been developed for introductory engineering sequence:

These programs provide a flexible working environment, and incorporate a GUI interface, configuration menus, hypertext instructions, problem sets, and documentation. They will provide one basis for future work. In the first year of this project, we will develop modules for freshman mechanics, and test them on the physics majors honors sequence: galileo (described above) and Jupiter (a simulation of planetary motion, developed to study dynamical systems and chaos) will be adapted to the needs of the course. In the second year, these modules will be introduced into the physics major sequence, and modules will be designed for the biological physics sequence and perhaps for the engineering electricity and magnetism course. Extensive use of a³ technologies for remote collaborations and multimedia and simulation distribution (both broadcast and "anytime") will allow this relatively small facility to serve as a focus for the entire array of physics service courses for engineering and biological sciences.

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Last modified on: 07/30/99