Links for Second Level Teachers

The original version of this collection of physics links was compiled for a talk entitled "The Internet/World Wide Web as a teaching resource". The talk was given by Gary Gillanders at a workshop for physics teachers from second level schools. The workshop was held in the Physics Department, NUI, Galway on October 29-30 1998.

All links from this page were checked and updated on 4 November 2002.

If you have comments on the sites listed, or are aware of other useful sites that could be added to the list, e-mail gary.gillandersnuigalway.ie.

Links recently added to this list.
Links of General Interest.
Mechanics.
Electricity and Magnetism.
Optics.
Modern Physics.
Astronomy & Space Sites.



Links recently added to this list

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Links of General Interest

General Educational Resource Sites (most with specific physics content)

http://www.ncte.ie/
This is the web site for the National Centre for Technology in Education, (NCTE) the body responsible for the implementation of Schools IT 2000 project. It contains details of the remit of the centre and also contains information on IT grants available to schools.

http://www.scoilnet.ie/
This is the National Centre for Technology in Education's ScoilNet web site.

http://www.schoolzone.co.uk/index.htm
The layout of this UK educational site, containing a wide variety of links and resources, changes significantly from time to time. Currently, you can access an excellent page of physics links and resources (they claim "1000 Physics Resources") by selecting "Physics" from the list of subjects which appears when you click on the arrow for "Secondary Guide" in the "Curriculum Guides" section near the bottom of the page. The site also has a very good Advanced Search Engine.

http://www.ase.org.uk/
This is the home page of the UK Association for Science Education whose slogan is "Teachers helping teachers to teach science".

http://www.teachers.net/
There is a lot of material on this site. Click on Lesson Plans to bring up that page. Click Browse and then select Science from the Select Category box. The click the View Category box. This will bring up lesson ideas with an indication of the level of the lesson. It is probably of more use for getting ideas for demonstrations than for developing lesson plans.

http://www.sciam.com/
This is the web site for Scientific American magazine. As well as giving on-line hypertext versions of articles in the magazine, it includes other features exclusively on the web site. These include applications of physics pertinent to the physics syllabus. This is one of the nicest science sites on the web.

http://www.exploratorium.edu/
The San Francisco Exploratorium is a renowned science museum. The excellent material on this site is nicely presented and includes activity suggestions for a number of physics related topics. The Exploratorium Science Snacks page is of particular note. It provides details of miniature science exhibits teachers can make using common, inexpensive, easily available materials along with accompanying student activities and, very importantly, clear explanations of what is going on.

http://www.sciencegems.com/
"Frank Potter's Science Gems" lists many science related links. Physics links are sorted by topic and give an indication of the standard of physics assumed for each listed site. There are links relating to most topics on the Leaving Certificate course here although their level and quality is somewhat variable. Recently, this page has undergone a reorganization. The new home page includes links to lesson plans using net material.

http://www.thinkquest.org/
"ThinkQuest is an educational initiative committed to advancing learning through the use of computer and networking technology. ThinkQuest challenges teachers and students of all ages to use the Internet in innovative and exciting ways as a collaborative, interactive teaching and learning tool. Each ThinkQuest program encourages participants to create high quality, content rich, educational Web sites that are made available freely to others around the world via the ThinkQuest Web server." ThinkQuest's physics pages are found here while ThinkQuest's astronomy & space exploration pages are found  here.  The quality of a number of the sites is very high, for example, Physics by Demonstrations provides interactive simulations, etc., for a wide range of physics topics. If using ThinkQuest material, remember that much of it has been written by high school students.

http://www.nwrel.org/sky/
The "Library in the Sky", of the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL) located in Oregon, contains a nice physics section aimed at teachers.

http://www.explorescience.com/
This site includes interactive demos in mechanics, electricity and magnetism, waves and optics. To use it, you need to download a Macromedia Shockwave Plug-in and have a browser which supports it.

http://db.education-world.com/perl/browse?cat_id=1635
This is the Education World physics page giving many educational physics links. There are over a 150 educational links under 19 or so headings.

http://ericir.syr.edu/
The AskEric web site is a web site for the U.S. fedrally funded Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC). It contains links to a multitude of education-related web sites. Physics resource material is accessible at http://ericir.syr.edu/cgi-bin/print.cgi/Resources/Subjects/Science/Physics.html.

http://www.reachoutmichigan.org/
This is an outreach site of the Southeastern Michigan Math-Science Learning Coalition covering a large range of material across the sciences for children at both primary and secondary level. All material is categorized both by subject and by age group. The emphasis is on learning science through fun experiments and activity. As such, it may be of use in helping to interest and motivate students, either as a transition year activity or as a supplement to your formal classes.

http://www.ScI-Journal.org/
ScI-Journal is an award-winning U.K. on-line publication which publishes work done by school and college students. It could be a useful source of ideas for practical work for, say, Transition Year classes.

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Educational Resource Sites Specific to Physics

http://www.physics.nuigalway.ie/Links/Links_main.htm
NUI, Galway Physics Department's "Physics Links Page" originally compiled by Cathal Flynn and currently maintained by Jenny Ryan. Categories include: astronomy, medical physics, physics demonstrations, how stuff works, high energy physics, physics java applets, chaos, and energy physics.

http://www.aapt.org/tpt/
This is the web site for "The Physics Teacher" which is a journal, of the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), aimed at High School physics teachers and at teachers of first year physics in third level colleges. The site currently includes PDF format copies of some of the articles in the printed version of the journal, which is an excellent publication.

http://www.psrc-online.org/
This is the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) Physical Science Resource Centre. It is a beautifully presented site which hundreds of resources and links for physics teachers at all levels. It ranks very high on my personal list of sites worth visiting.

http://howthingswork.virginia.edu/home.html
This is the web site for " How Things Work: the Physics of Everyday Life ", by Louis A. Bloomfield. The site contains a mine of information on the physics of everything from birds to photocopiers. Although it is very much a text based site, it is well worth a visit.

http://www.kent.wednet.edu/staff/trobinso/physicspages/PhysicsOf.html
"The Physics Of...." is based on a physics programme Kentridge Senior High School in the USA. The web pages, written by the students, cover a wide range of applications of physics, particularly in sports and music.

http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/Physics/Education/K_12/
The Yahoo High School Physics directory contains links to a number of sites.

http://www.stvincent.ac.uk/Resources/Links/physics.html
The St. Vincent College (England) Physics Links page gives many links of different levels.

http://home.planetinternet.be/~poolly/eng/eng.html
This site provides links to physics-related java applets at various sites on the web. The applets are categorized under headings such as measurement, optics, mechanics, etc.

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Mechanics

http://webphysics.iupui.edu/152_251_mainpage.html
"Introductory Physics on the Web" is a first year web based physics course at a US university provided by the Web Physics Consortium. It includes some calculus based material. I have listed it in this section since the currently displayed content of the 152 course is mainly mechanics - vectors, Newton's Laws, work and energy. Both Physics 152 and Physics 251 contain "What is physics good for?" sections giving nice applications of physics. For example, when I last visited the 152 site, it covered "Energy, momentum and driving". It discussed the relevance of energy, momentum and mass in car safety - air bags, bumpers, collisions, and skidding. The 251 page deals with hurricanes. The content changes as they move through their term. On a previous visit, the World Wide Web featured in 152 while 251 contained essays on the photocopier and power generation.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/
This "Basics of Space Flight Learners' Workbook" site is maintained by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Some material looks appropriate to Leaving Certificate level and includes a section on "Gravitation and Mechanics". Each section ends with a series of questions. It is possible to obtain a paper copy of the workbook by downloading it as a PDF file. The related web sites link leads to a page with very nice links to information on each of the planets.

Sports are important and interesting applications of physics. The following sites should be of interest in this regard.

http://www.exploratorium.edu/sports/
This is the sports section of the San Francisco Exploratorium web site. Although it concentrates on US sports such as baseball and ice hockey, it gives a lot of information and links on other sports.

http://wings.avkids.com/Book/Sports/
This site (which has moved from http://muttley.ucdavis.edu/Book/Sports) covers the aerodynamics of a number of sports. The material is nicely structured with beginner, intermediate, advanced and instructor levels of material available under most headings. Sports covered include golf, tennis, baseball, javelin, discus, frisbee, boomerangs, cycling, motor racing, swimming and sailing. As well as giving beautiful explanations of the physics behind the sports, it suggests various activities/projects for students. Overall, this is a very rewarding site to visit. Moving up to the top level of the site http://wings.avkids.com/, you will find that this web site has very interesting sections on flight - history, fundamentals of flight, animals flying, vehicles, the atmosphere, etc.

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Electricity and Magnetism

http://www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/Intro.html
"The Exploration of the Earth's Magnetosphere" is a NASA web site aimed at high school level. It contains everything that you might want to know about the Earth's magnetic field. This includes a nice general discussion of magnetic fields.

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Optics

http://www.vislab.usyd.edu.au/photonics/index.html
This page, from "The Sydney Regional Scientific Visualisation Laboratory", deals with modern communications technologies with extensive material on fibre optic communications, communications networks, mobile phones, etc. The level of some of the material is a bit high for second level students. (They also have nice pages with a lower level of material on the relationship between the tilt of the earth's spin axis and the seasons at http://www.vislab.usyd.edu.au/education/discover/seasons/index.html .)

http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/staff/blynds/rnbw.html
Rainbows are wondrous objects and enthral children and adults alike. The "About Rainbows" page gives a very nice description of how rainbows are formed.

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Modern Physics

http://www.iop.org/Physics/Electron/Exhibition/
This is the Institute of Physic's "Life, the Universe, and the Electron" site set up in 1997 to celebrate 100 years since the discovery of the electron. It covers the discovery of the electron and many other topics directly relevant to the Leaving Certificate syllabus including various contemporary applications of the electron in technology. This page can take quite some time to load.

http://www.lbl.gov/abc/
"The ABC's of Nuclear Science!" is aimed at US High School students and seems to cover a good deal of the ground covered in "the nucleus" section of the Leaving Certificate syllabus. The site includes detailed descriptions, diagrams and tables for a number of radioactivity experiments.

http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/
"Physics 2000" gives information on the application of physics in devices such as the microwave oven, x-rays, CAT scans, lasers, etc.

http://particleadventure.org/particleadventure
"The Particle Adventure" is aimed at high school level. It introduces the theory of fundamental particles and forces, called the Standard Model. It explores the experimental evidence and the reasons physicists want to go beyond this theory. In addition, it provides information on particle decay and a brief history section. Its http://particleadventure.org/particleadventure/other/othersites.html page gives a very comprehensive list of "Particle Physics Education and Information sites".

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Astronomy & Space

The following sites are not directly related to the syllabus. However, judging by the interest of school children in astronomy, they may be of use from a motivational point of view or perhaps may be of use with Transition Year Physics students. Some of the pictures and explanations may also be of interest for the Junior Certificate Science optional module in Astronomy. The sites listed here are all NASA related. Consequently, the quality of their content is very high.

http://kids.msfc.nasa.gov/
"NASA kids - a NASA site dedicated to kids - kids of all ages!" Yes - I enjoyed browsing this site!

http://observe.arc.nasa.gov/nasa/core.shtml.html
NASA's Observatorium is a public access site for Earth and space data. They say it has pictures of the Earth, planets, stars, and other "cool stuff", as well as the stories behind those images.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
The Astronomy Picture of the Day site features a different astronomical image or photograph each day, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. Past pictures can also be accessed. The explanations incorporate many hypertext links to other relevant sites making this a very useful site.

http://resources.stsci.edu/
This is the home page of the Space Telescope Science Institute, i.e. the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) home page. It contains many beautiful astronomical images, a lot of information on the HST and also educational activities.

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/
This site, called "Imagine the Universe!" is a NASA site aimed at ages 14 and up. The introduction says it is "dedicated to a discussion about our Universe, what we know about it, how it is evolving, and the kinds of objects and phenomena it contains. Just as importantly, we also discuss how scientists know what they know, what mysteries remain, and how they might one day find the answers to these questions." If you have a student who wants to know about black holes or other exotic objects, this is a good place to start.

http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/StarChild.html
As its cartoon-type home page illustrates nicely, "StarChild: A Learning Center for Young Astronomers" is NASA's alternative to "Imagine the Universe!" aimed at the under 14's. It is very well presented at two levels of difficulty, Level 1 aimed at about primary school level with Level 2 probably at about the Junior Cycle second level age group. The site also features a variety of audio files. Listen to a song on the Universe page about using the Doppler Shift to measure star velocities!

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