Sections on this page: [Atom] [Demos] [Education] [Electricity and Magnetism] [Electronics] [Energy Resources] [Equipment] [Fermi Questions] [Gravity and Orbits] [Link Collections] [Misc] [Museums] [News] [Nuclear Physics] [Optics] [Online Texts] [Relativity] [Simple Harmonic Motion] [Simulations (Applets, etc.)] [Units] [Video] [Bottom of Page]
| Demonstration Ideas | ||
| Arbor Scientific Ideas | arborsci.com/CoolStuff/Archives.htm; This site lists categories of demonstration and teaching ideas. Some of the demos rely on equipment that can be purchased from Arbor Scientific. | |
| Daryl Science | darylscience.com; Scroll down the page to find the links to the demo ideas. This site is the creation of a high school science teacher in Greenwich, CT. | |
| Demos PIRA | physicslearning.colorado.edu Physics Learning Lab The site is hosted at U. Colorado The site has descriptions and drawings of demos. The demos are grouped by topics. This is a portal for physics education. This site is a search engine for university physics lecture demonstration websites. If you click on the "Spider" link you can search all 56 sites or select the university site you wish to search. Some sites have online videos of the demonstrations. | |
| Demos Berkeley | U.C. Berkeley; lecture demonstrations, list of applets, AV materials, downloadable demonstration workbooks (PDF) with popularity ratings | |
| Demos Videos | Wake Forest; MPEG II and RealVideo clips of demos, the list has about 12 demos as of 8/7/2006 | |
| Scott's Blog | teachingphysics.wordpress.com This blog discusses low cost demos. The blogger (Scott) is a high school physics teacher in the Philadelphia area. On the home page he describes himself as "the McGyver of physics teachers." | |
| Steve Spangler TV Demos | stevespanglerscience.com This web page has suggestions for physics demonstrations / experiments. This page is one small area of the web site. | |
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| Education | |
| AAPT | American Association of Physics Teachers; High School and Undergraduate resources |
| Compadre | compadre.org; Educational resource collections for teachers and students in physics and astronomy. There are materials for Middle School through college. |
| Flipping Physics | flippingphysics.com This site has resources to help teachers "flip" the classroom. In this style of engaging students, students watch videos and read material before the class. The instructor then guides students through the material in the classroom rather than giving a lecture in the classroom. Please watch the author's video on his web site (Click on Flipping, and then click on AAPT Webinar). |
| Football Physics | U. of Nebraska introducing physics using football examples, YouTube 25 clips |
| Football Physics | U. of Tennessee introducing physics using football examples, requires Internet Explorer |
| Help for Students | Doug Craigen's site; Help For Physics Students, practice problems, animations, books, tutorials, more |
| MIT Open Courseware Physics | ocw.mit.edu This site has course notes, homework, exams and other material for a wide range of undergraduate and graduate level physics courses at MIT. |
| MIT Open Courseware | ocw.mit.edu This is the home page for MIT open courses. |
| Moloney | Mike Moloney's site; information on using spreadsheets to teach physics; Physics Resource Packet Project, materials that teachers can use with symbolic algebra programs and spreadsheets to teach physics |
|
Nebraska Calc Physics 1975 | digitalcommons.unl.edu This site has free calculus based physics modules developed in 1975. |
| NOVA | NOVA programs are described; browse by title or subject; teacher resources are online |
| Physics Classroom | physicsclassroom.com This site has tutorials and multimedia presentations on topics from introductory physics. |
| PHYS-L Archives | PHYS-L Listserv archives of the forum for physics educators email discussions, searchable by date (month/year) or topic |
| PHYS-L Home Page | physicsed.buffalostate.edu; This site has information about the PHYS-L mailing list and other physics education mailing lists. |
| Physics To Go | compadre.org; This site has a collection of links that let you learn physics principles. You can browse by topic or search the site. |
| Science Forums | AmaSci.com; list of educator online and e-mail discussion groups |
| Science/Physics Education | U. of Maryland; This is a collection of links to departments engaged in physics education research. |
| Sprott | J. C. Sprott's site, Wisconsin U.; scroll down ... PowerPoints for popular lectures, downloadable video of the Wonders of Physics lectures, more |
| Teacher-Toolkits | physicsclassroom.com/Teacher-Toolkits ...from their website:"Teacher Toolkits provide teachers with a collection of resources that are ideal for planning standards-based, multimedia lessons and units. We've combed the web and selected some of the best, most professional simulations, videos, and other tools that complement the resources present at The Physics Classroom." |
| Tutorials U. Guelph | trigonometry, vectors, mechanics, graphing, algebra, units, significant figures |
| Vernier | Software and Equipment for science class rooms |
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| Electricity and Magnetism | |
| Cell Phone Physics | yale.edu This page has a written description of the physics of cell phones. |
| Earth's Magnetic Field | National Geophysical Data Center; space weather; nice online Earth's magnetic field calculator, follow these links: models, online software, compute the field values, enter your zip code |
| Earth's Magnetic Field Data | USGS; monitoring of Earth's magnetic field, real time data from several observatories, very nice movies of the historical changes in the field, good Intro. to Geomagnetism, prediction models are out of date |
| Electrostatics | Bill Beaty's electrostatics page; projects, articles, links |
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| Electronics | |
| Bowden's Circuits | Bowden's Hobby Circuits for hobbyists and students, over 100 circuits, links to other sites |
| Epanorama | epanorama.net; Articles and Links for a multitude of electronics topics |
| Lessons | Tony R. Kuphaldt's site; Lessons in Electric Circuits; online lessons |
| Molecular Expressions | micro.magnet.fsu.edu; Michael W. Davidson's site at Florida State. This page has links to various tutorials on beginning electronics. The site also has links to Interactive Java Tutorials that help explain concepts of beginning electronics, atomic properties, and a wide variety of complicated electronic devices (including computer related devices). |
| Sensors | sensorland.com; How sensors and systems work, over 70 articles |
| SPICE | Berkeley; SPICE circuit simulator |
| SPICE Resources | links to online resources for the SPICE circuit simulator |
| Superconductors | description, history, uses, types of, news, and more |
| Tesla | PBS site on the life and work of Nikola Tesla |
| Transistor History | PBS site; electron, PN junction, development of the transistor, more |
| Tutorials | free tutorials, amateur radio, amplifiers, antennas, devices (with circuits), filters, oscillators and more |
| WebEE | web-ee.com; schematics, tutorials, links, downloads |
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| Energy Resources | |
| Alternative Energy | www.otherpower.com; This site has information and instructions on building wind, solar, etc. power generators. |
| Energy Audit | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Do-it-yourself energy audit. You will enter your zip code and facts about your house. You can select the energy upgrade and calculate the cost savings and payback time. |
| Renewable Energy Links | www.otherpower.com; This page has links to a wide variety of alternative energy sites. You can submit a site to be added to the collection of links. |
| Space Solar Power | spacesolarpower.wordpress.com; Summer 2007... This site asks for ideas from the public on how to implement the collection of solar energy in space and deliver that energy to the surface of the earth. |
| Sustainable Energy Conf 2008 | rael.berkeley.edu This site has pdfs and PowerPoints of the conference presentations for the physics of sustainable energy, 2008 at Berkeley. |
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| Equipment ...No endorsement is implied for any of these companies. | |
| Arbor Scientific | arborsci.com; This company supplies smaller pieces of equipment and demonstration items for elementary schools up through college level. |
| Educational Inovations | www.teachersource.com; This company provides a wide range of simple products. |
| Harbor Freight | harborfreight.com; This site has a wide range of tools and equipment. You can search for an item or browse. It is possible to find low cost items that can be used in teaching physics (and other sciences). |
| Pasco | pasco.com; This company supplies equipment for labs and classrooms from middle schools up through college level. Equipment, software, lab instructions, forums, and more are available at this site. |
| Sargent Welch | www.sargentwelch.com; Extensive catalog of products suitable for high school and college labs. |
| Vernier | Software and Equipment for science class rooms |
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| Fermi Questions | |
| Fermi Solutions | tufts.edu; This web page gives the reasoning used to 'solve' three Fermi type questions. |
| Maryland | University of Maryland Fermi Problems site; This web page has general questions and questions for selected topic areas in physics. |
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| Gravity | |
| Gravitational Force | fourmilab.ch/gravitation/foobar; This site discusses the force of gravity and describes a simple setup to observe the gravitational attraction between two objects. The site also has videos of the experiment. This is not the traditional Cavendish Experiment. I have not set up the equipment described in this video. I would be interested in hearing from someone that this really works as shown in the video. |
| Gravity Simulator | Java Applet, interactive, preset starting conditions |
| Orbits | Java Applet, preset variety of orbits |
| Weight | Your weight on other planets, enter your own weight |
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| Links (Collections of Online Resources) | |
| Potter | www.sciencegems.com/physical2.html This site has links to various tutorials and simulations. |
| Web Sights | physicsed.buffalostate.edu; This site has collections of web sites organized by year. Many of the links you find were reported in the Web Sights column of "The Physics Teacher." You will need to click on the year folder and then select the month. |
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| Miscellaneous | |
| AAPT Facebook | facebook.com Social Network page for the American Assoc. of Physics Teachers. |
| ArXiv Papers | arxiv.org This site has free access to scientific papers in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics. |
| Baseball Physics | webusers.npl.uiuc.edu/~a-nathan/pob; Alan Nathan's extensive page on the physics of baseball. |
| Careers | careers.aapt.org This site has tools for job seekers and employers. |
| Careers | aps.org/careers This site seeks to inform students about careers that use physics. |
| Data NIST | www.nist.gov; This site has physical reference data. The site also has links to chemistry data and many other categories of data. |
| Educypedia | Educypedia is an information resource about scientific and educational material; biology, chemistry, physics, electronics, space, more |
| Factbook | Glenn Elert's site; facts on topics from acceleration to volume; This is a good source for numbers when you are writing physics problems. |
| FAQ | Physics Frequently Asked Questions; general questions, particle physics, nuclear, quantum, relativity, cosmology, links to other FAQ's |
| Galileo | NOVA; his life, the telescope, his experiments, more |
| Gift Ideas | acsu.buffalo.edu This site has gift ideas with an academic flavor. I have not ordered anything from the site and have no connection to the site. |
| Graph Paper | free pdf files of various types of graph paper |
| How Stuff Works | HowStuffWorks, Inc.; tabbed categories at top of page; articles; scroll down to see a list of categories |
| IBM Rsearch | IBM research in various disciplines |
| Innocentive | innocentive.com This web site allows companies to post tasks that need solutions. Those who provide the solution get paid. I have not registered and don't know anyone who has used the site so use caution. |
| Jokes | Jokes and Science; wide variety of topics, Astronomy, Physics, Computers, Einstein, etc. |
| Makezine | makezine.com; Project ideas from a wide variety of science disciplines |
| Movie Physics | Reviews of movies based on their level of bad physics |
| Nobel Prize | Official site for the Nobel Foundation; You can enter a year (e.g. 1921) and read the speeches given at the presentation of the Nobel prize. |
| Photo Contest AAPT | aapt.org This site has archives of the best photos submitted for the High School Photo Contest from 1998 to the present. You will have to scroll to the bottom of the page to find the links to photos from previous years. |
| Photos | photos.aip.org This site has favorite photos selected from the Emilio Segre Visual Archives. The photos can be purchased but they are expensive. Please respect the copyright. |
| Physics Review (notes) | physics.aps.org This page has links to one page comments and explanations by experts upon just-published papers in Physical Review and Physical Review Letters. |
| PhysicsWorld | physicsworld.com; This site has physics related News, Jobs, and Resources |
| Popular Science | www.popsci.com This is the home page for Popular Science magazine. Look for the link on this page to the free archive of 138 years of the magazine. This archive can be searched. |
| Science.gov | science.gov A portal to science documents generated by the U.S. government. This site has a very wide range of topics. |
| Science Hobbyist | William Beaty's site; links to suppliers of equipment; ideas for projects; many miscellaneous topics; many links to other sites |
| Time NIST | https://nist.time.gov/ Current Time; USA Time Zones. |
| Time Measurement | NIST Physics Lab; Ancient Calendars, history of clocks and time keeping up to the modern age |
| Wolfram Alpha | wolframalpha.com/examples/Physics.html This site has built in calculators that cover many topics in classical and modern physics. |
| Wolfram Alpha main | wolframalpha.com This page has examples of inputs to the Alpha Computational Knowledge Engine. Alpha is more of a search of an extensive data base than a search of Internet sites. Results are in the form of text, numbers, graphs, etc. |
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| Museums | |
| Exploratorium | San Francisco museum that claims to have over 18,000 web pages; directed towards pre-college age but has useful material |
| Galileo | museogalileo Museo Galileo in Florence Italy. This site provides access to a virtual museum where you can download video and audio. Other links include Libraries, Exhibitions, Galileo Portal, and more. |
| Science and Industry, Chicago | www.msichicago.org |
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| News | |
| Research News | scicentral.com; scientific research news |
| Science Daily | www.sciencedaily.com; News from all fields of science. |
| SciTech | scitechdaily.com; news, forums, articles related to science, science portholes, more |
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| Nuclear Physics | ||
| AE4RV Plant Sim | www.ae4rv Simulate the operation of a nuclear power plant and try to avoid a meltdown. | |
| ANS | American Nuclear Society; radiation dose calculator, special topics page with Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, nuclear power, etc.; click on Home link to get to more resources | |
| Atom Bomb | AtomicArchive.com; science and history of nuclear weapons, with a large volume of information | |
| Chernobyl | about.com Summary of the Chernobyl accident | |
| Chernobyl Journal | Filatova Elena Vladimirovna's report of driving in the area around Chernobyl. | |
| Cloud Chamber Video | cloudchambers.com; This site has an online video that show alpha and beta tracks, and secondary cosmic rays, in a cloud chamber. This is a promotional video for the company's product. There are several cloud chamber videos on YouTube. | |
| Dose Chart | xkcd.com/radiation This site displays ionizing radiation dose graphically. The cause of various dose levels is presented. The chart is up to date with actually nuclear events up through spring 2011 (Fukushima, Japan). | |
| Geiger Counter | geigercounter.org This site has basic explanations for the nucleus, radioactivity, isotopes, geiger counter operation, and more. It is much more than just a page about geiger counters. | |
| Karnobyl Sim | www.ida.liu.se Simple simulation of a nuclear power plant. Try to avoid a meltdown as malfunctions occur. | |
| Nuclear Science | National Museum of Nuclear Science and History | |
| Nuclide Data NIST | physics.nist.gov; This site has ionization energies, mass values of isotopes, ground state electron configuration, data on spectral lines, and more. | |
| Nuclear Data Berkely | Several links to data topics | |
| Nuclide Data Webelements | webelements.com; Click on an element. Then click on the Nuclear Data link on the left side of the screen. | |
| Radon Nebraska | https://dhhs.ne.gov/pages/radon.aspx; This site has links for information about radon in Nebraska | |
| Three Mile Island | PBS companion site to the video: 'Meltdown at Three Mile Island'; I highly recommend the video! I found it to be accurate and very well put together with a great deal of film shot during the accident. This site has some information on nuclear reactors and the details of the accident. | |
| Three Mile Island | Smithsonian National Museum of American History | |
| Three Mile Island | NRC Factsheet | |
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| Online Textbooks | |
| AP Physics B | archive.org/details/ap_physics_b; This site has explanations and animations for introductory physics. |
| Archive | archive.org This site has digital copies of free and out-of-copyright documents. The search box is at the top left of the window. You can search for categories by media type. (e.g. physics in the first search box and texts in the dropdown list of media types. |
| HyperTextBook | Glenn Elert's site; under construction |
| Light and Matter | Ben Crowell's site; Free online textbook for Introductory Physics |
| Millikan Gale 1922 | archive.org This is a 63 MB pdf file of 556 scanned pages. The text covers elementary physics: measurement, mechanics, thermodynamics, electricity and magnetism, optics, radioactivity. The text has many examples of practical physics and good diagrams. The scans are quite readable. |
| Wikipedia | en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics; This is an entry in the Wikipedia. Here you can find explanations on topics of physics and general background about physics. It is not an organized physics textbook. |
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| Optics | |
| Atmospheric Optics | Les Cowley's site; Spectacular photos of interesting effects involving light in the atmosphere, with explanations |
| Optical Illusions | Michael Bach's site; thumbnails and larger views with explanations |
| Optics and You | Michael W. Davidson's site, Florida State; timeline, activities, tutorials |
| Rainbows | National Center for Atmospheric Research; lots of information about rainbows |
| Thin Lens | phy.ntnu.edu.tw; Thin lenses, mirrors on an optical bench. The user can move the optical devices around. The program draws rays that locate the image. The program also calculates the magnification. |
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| Relativity | |
| Compadre Tutorial | compadre.org/relativity This site has a collection of resources related to Special and General Relativity. |
| Dummies' Guide | Arfur Dogfrey's site; The concepts of Special Relativity are explained without using math; The site is hosted at tripod.com so expect popup ads when you view this site. |
| Einstein | American History of Natural History; This site has articles on his life, his scientific work, and his place in history. |
| Einstein's Papers | Einstein Archives Online Website; scientific and non-scientific papers |
| Einstein Light | U. of New South Wales, Australia; requires flash; Animations and explanations related to Galileo, Maxwell, Einstein, Time Dilation, E=mc2 |
| Einstein Online | links related to Einstein; overviews, writings, moments, physics, quotes, pictures, miscellaneous |
| Einstein's Big Idea | NOVA; E = mc2 and more |
| Spacetime Diagrams | Tatsu Takeuchi's site; The site uses space-time diagrams to help explain the concepts and conclusions of Special Relativity. |
| Special Relativity | howstuffworks.com; Frames of Reference, 1st Postulate, 2nd Postulate, Time, Energy and Mass, Simultaneous Events, thorough explanation of the Twin Paradox, more |
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| Simple Harmonic Motion | |
| Pendulum | Java Applet by Hwang, interactive, graphs PE and KE |
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| Simulations (Applets, Flash, Other Software) | |
| Applets - Falstad | Paul Falstad's site; wide variety of applets, oscillations, waves, EM, Quantum, Thermodynamics, math; links to other applet pages |
| Applets and Flashlets | Michael Fowler's site, U. of Virginia; applets (Java) and flashlets (Flash), applets available for free download, read conditions of use |
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Easy Java Simulations Wiki | www.um.es/fem/EjsWiki This site provides instructions on using the Easy Java Simulation system. |
| Easy Java Simulations | fem.um.es; F. Esquembre's site; Ejs is a program that helps you create applets for scientific simulations. It is free for non-commercial purposes. |
| Flash Animations | David Harrison's animations; there is some interactivity, the site has a tutorial on writing Flash animations for physics |
| Millikan Oil Drop Simplified | phy.ntnu.edu.tw; This site lets the user select the voltage, change the charge (1 to 5 electrons, set randomly), and change the drop (size is random). The applet calculates Q based on the voltage, the terminal velocity in free fall, and terminal velocity when the E field is applied. Note, that as of January, 2008 the formula on the page is wrong. The velocity down should be under the square root, not the velocity moving up. Q is calculated correctly. |
| Open Source Physics | compadre.org/osp/ This site has compiled programs, curriculum packages, EJS modeling, programming tools and more. |
| PhET | U. Colorado - Physics Education Technology; simulations for introductory physics; also Math, Statistics, Chemistry, Earth and Space, and Biology |
| Physics Classroom | www.physicsclassroom.com/Physics-Interactives This site has HTML5 interactive simulations for various topics for first and second semester physics topics. There are also pdf documents that describe the activities. |
| Physlet Guide | www.compadre.org/Physlets/preface.cfm; This site gives instructions on how to use physlets for teaching. This site has physlets sorted into categories of physics. |
| Spreadsheets | U. Virginia; Michael Fowler; Teaching dynamics with Excel. You can download Excel spreadsheets from this site. The site also has instructions as to how the spreadsheets are constructed. |
| Tarara | Richard Tarara's site; free software downloads, class room animations, Calorimetry, Centripetal Force, E&M, Optics, Special Relativity, Thermo, Energy management simulators, photo-realistic lab simulations, and much more. |
| uCOMP | compadre.org/uCOMP This site is "a collection and a place for sharing information and resources for those interested in computational physics." The simulations are intended to help the educational process. |
| Virtual Physics Lab | Hwang's site with applets for many areas of physics |
| Science Simulations | www.physicsclassroom.com/Minds-on-Physics; questions organized by topic; Minds On Physics uses Shockwave. |
| Wolfram Demonstrations | demonstrations.wolfram.com; "The Wolfram Demonstrations Project is an open-code resource that uses dynamic computation to illuminate concepts in science, technology, mathematics, art, finance, and a remarkable range of other fields." You can view the demonstrations easily in a browser. Or, you can download interactive modules, but will also need to download a free Mathematica player to use them. |
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| Units | |
| NIST | NIST Reference on Constants, Units, and Uncertainty |
| Powers of Ten | Similar to the Powers of Ten movie |
| Unit Converter | Ben-Cam InterMedia; convert standard and unusual units here, also has an online scientific calculator with 16 digits displayed |
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| Video | |
| 60 Symbols | sixtybymbols.com Nottingham University "Sixty Symbols is a collection of videos about physics and astronomy presented by experts from The University of Nottingham." The videos are good quality and are uusually 5 to 10 minutes in length. |
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"Best" Physics Videos | bestphysicsvideos.blogspot.com This site has physics videos listed by category. The videos range from old class room lectures to computer simulations. |
| Acceleration | youtube.com A jet, car, and motorcycle start at the same time down a long runway. |
| Do Flick | doflick.com This site has some educational videos. The video quality is a little better than YouTube. I found physics videos but no astronomy videos. |
| LivePhoto RIT | livephoto.rit.edu These short video clips are interactive. The user can collect data off of the vidoe clips. I prefered the .swf (Flash) files. |
| Mechanical Universe | Mechanical Universe Videos on YouTube; The videos were produced by the California Institute of Technology |
| OpenStax Textbooks | This video introduces OpenStax College Textbooks. If this link becomes broken, go to YouTube.com and search for OpenStax. |
| OpenStax Textbooks | This video from 2012 discusses the OpenStax College Textbooks project. If this link becomes broken, go to YouTube.com and search for OpenStax. |
| OpenStax Physics Concept Videos | This YouTube search brings you to a list of phsyics concepts videos from 2015. These videos should peak student interest in the topics before they are discussed in class. If this link becomes broken, go to YouTube.com and search for "physics concept trailer OpenStax." Mini lectures, daily reading guides, and sample problems for introductory physics are available at physics.gpclements.com |
| Pelletier | web.ncf.ca This site sells short video clips in Quicktime and AVI format. They are advertised as ready to be inserted into PowerPoint presentations. |
| Perimeter Institute Lectures | www.perimeterinstitute.ca/video-library This site has archives of public lectures by invited speakers on various topics in physics and astronomy. The lectures go back to 2003. |
| PhysClips | www.animations.physics.unsw.edu.au This site has video, explanations, and resources for a variety of intro. physics topics. |
| Powers of 10 1977 | youtube.com This is the original powers of 10 movie made in 1977. |
| SciTalks | scitalks.com Science videos for a wide range of fields. |
| Sulfur Hexafluoride Boat | www.glumbert.com/media/float; This site has a video of an aluminum foil boat floating in a tank of sulfur hexafluoride. |
| TUVA Feynman | research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva This site has 7 video lectures by Feynman from 1964. The videos are black and white. You will need to have Microsoft's Silverlight installed to view the videos. |
| YouTube Physics | youtube.com; This link takes you to youtube.com and performs a keyword search for physics. |
| YouTube Video Converter | vixy.net This site has an online tool to convert Flash video found on YouTube to various video formats. You can then download the converted file. |
| Video Converter for FireFox | downloadhelper.net This site provides a Firefox extension to help download video off the Internet. |
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