Carl Mungan

• Change the Equation is a business group dedicated to improving STEM learning.
• Frank Potter has some good links for grade school and college level physical science on his science gems page; although I would caution that he is not formally affiliated with any educational institution.
• Point your students to some profiles of working scientists and engineers on the science360 network.
• Kyle Forinash has an interactive online textbook on the Physics of Sound for nonscience majors.
• If you are a Mac user, as I am, you may like the list of science resources (mostly chemistry, but with some physics overlap).
• A variation on the Prisoner’s Dilemma where the computer can essentially force your average score to be fixed, to rise, or to fall. If anyone sees you, tell them you’re not playing a game, you’re doing operations research….
• Teaching intermediate mechanics? The old (1960) but great film on Frames of Reference.
• NIH has an Office of Science Education (mostly life sciences, but still worth a browse).
• Engineering Pathway is a collaboration of academia and industry linking to a variety of resources supporting technical education.
• The Institute of Physics has a site devoted to Teaching Advanced Physics. (By “advanced” they mean topics in first-year university physics.)
• Find a discussion of Guided Discovery Problems. Then, in the left menu you will find links to all kinds of other pedagogical resources.
• If you were to dig a hole straight though the center of the earth starting anywhere, where would you end up? See Dig a hole through the Earth to find out.
  
• Check out UBC’s Physics Teaching for the 21st Century.
• NASA has been trying for a long time to perfect solar sailing in space. Next year it will try to deploy a sail over 1000 square meters in size.
• SPS has a site devoted to Careers Using Physics, including job resources and college & graduate school admissions.
• The briefly titled website Why-Sci is a collection of snippets written by scientists to explain current research topics to the general public.
• Sites with photos and descriptions of physics demos are often helpful to instructors teaching a new course. View the University of Florida’s page.

Carl Mungan is an Associate Professor of Physics at the United States Naval Academy.

Disclaimer–The articles and opinion pieces found in this issue of the APS Forum on Education Newsletter are not peer refereed and represent solely the views of the authors and not necessarily the views of the APS.