Physics |
A small collection of reviews - not the latest (see Science Software for schools) but reviews all the same
As last years BETT Award winner, Fable Multimedia, have spawned a series of affordable teaching toolsMotion Time Graphs, Transverse & Longitudinal Waves and Terminal Velocity
(each £65) provide a measured learning activity in deservingly difficult areas.
For more of this and stretching across the subject, see Physics Online (www.physics-online.com
- £295) where models meet movies and online programs (applets). You can sign up
for a trial and find not just great resources but a clever and easy way to store
teaching material beside them. Oscillations and waves (Fable)Age 15-18 From Fable Multimedia, Web www.fable.co.uk A set of simulations showing how waves interact with the world. Here are numerous software models 'to die for' that show the Dopler effect, damping and diffraction gratings. Advanced physics will want to use these as demonstrations or class activities, and possibly throw away their slinky springs and oscilloscopes. The title offers something of a breakthrough in allowing you to get straight to the part you need without the usual garnish of multimedia frills. Force and motion (Fable)You may agree that some things are worth paying for. This BETT award winning title offers eleven programs to help with ideas like the velocity-time graph, two dimensional collisions, and the orbits of satellites. Like the best software models, there are variables to change and results to see and record. For example in the ‘circular motion’ program students can investigate the relationship between speed and frequency, radius or mass. Another lets them draw vectors and change speed or distance in this bemusing topic. Unlike many, it installs easily on a network and there’s accompanying pupil material to save eons thinking this through. From www.fable.co.uk Crocodile PhysicsFor something highly interactive, Crocodile Physics (age 12-18, from Crocodile Clips) is like a well-stocked physics lab where you can experiment to your heart’s content. Covering many syllabus topics, here is the hardware flattened for the small screen. There are masses, trolleys, lenses and electronic components to assemble, experiment and take measurements with. You can swing pendulums, change gravity, change angle of ramps to learn about forces. Excellent are the optics tools which let you split light into its colours with a prism and see how fibre optics transmit light. A section on eye defects, where you increase the focal length of a spectacle lens and see what that does to the light rays will make an awesome teaching tool. Though it comes with worksheets, those with time to spare can use it to create impressive interactive tutorials. This really is one to see for yourself – it reminds of Interactive Physics (age 13-18, from Fable) another ‘do what you like’ tool, more technical but very flexible. Multimedia Motion (age 15-18)Has over 50 film clips of vehicle crashes, balls bouncing, free falling and things in motion. Each clip can be examined frame by frame and the movement of objects can be plotted. Plotted points can be immediately placed on a graph with time along the bottom axis and distance along the bottom. It is then very easy to plot velocity or acceleration against time graphs to further study the motion. This is a unique and unparalleled classroom tool for use in this area of the curriculum. (Cambridge Science Media Windows PC) Red Shift 2 (age 15-adult)A model of the sky allowing an almost unlimited exploration of space. The viewing position can be adjusted to anywhere in the solar system. Has a Dictionary of Astronomy, hundreds of photographs and film clips from say, the landing of the moon. Most useful could be the guided tours of the universe where ideas about the seasons, the orbits of the planets and the phases of the moon are modelled. Requires a fast computer to run this at a satisfactory speed. Using it is a mental challenge too as there are no teaching notes so you need to know your stuff. (Dorling Kindersley, Maris Multimedia or mail order PC; Apple) Dorling Kindersley's Eyewitness Encyclopaedia of Space and the Universe (age 12-adult)If you like big numbers, space is the place to be: here in our galaxy 100,000 light years across are 500,000 stars and a subject - astronomy, made of millions of loosely connected facts. Fortunately, only some are needed for the half dozen sentences that make up the curriculum. For children astronomy has plenty of mileage. For science teachers, the opportunities for practical work are scarce. So when you can't reach for the stars, you'll have to reach for your CD-Rom. Dorling Kindersley may be late in adding a 'space' title to its range, but they've got something headed for success. Need a display of the orbits of the planets? The phases of the moon? The birth of a star? It's all here and as we've come to expect with CD-Rom, so much of this is explained, illustrated and animated. There are sections about cosmology, the birth of the universe and about those space programmes such as Apollo and Voyager. Here too is the background to the technology - about gravity, rockets and life in space. There's plenty that most teenagers could handle, and unlike past DK titles, they can copy the pictures and text. Mind you, if they can find anything about tides give 'em a bonus mark: it's not in the index, and they can't even search the text to see if it's anywhere else. You click on the 'space console', a button pushers paradise to find all this information and from here you can also enter 'the star dome'. This excellent feature picks up today's date and time to show you the positions of the sun, moon, planets and constellations as they are in the sky right now. You see them as labeled blobs that move as time passes, or as you fast forward by the month, day, or minute. Knowing there will be a solar eclipse in October, I surprised myself by pin pointing the event down to Saturday the 12th, after lunch, during the cricket - so that's OK. There's lighter stuff too: a quiz which isn't too punitive and let's you go find the answer; a couple of games - assembling the stage of a rocket and getting the thrust right for a moon landing that you could learn from. This DK title is good. There are millions of facts and lots of 'see also buttons' offering to help make connections between them. Seen beside 'Earth and Universe' - a title expressly designed for schools a comparison seems unfair - it is lower budget material and obviously not as 'produced' as the 'DK' one. To its credit it has classroom worksheets, a teacher's guide and even words about the tides that you can copy and reuse. It also has a very relevant section, collecting together observations, such as the movement of the sun in the sky, and explaining them using animation. But otherwise the approach is oh so dry that it's really for children who desperately want to know. That there's no background music and graphic effects isn't the issue, it's more to do with a sense of enjoyment and atmosphere. Even with a space CD-Rom, learning is hard in this vacuum. Domestic Electricity - spreadsheet idea (age 11-14)You can build a spreadsheet to record the use of electricity by various appliances. On the spreadsheet you enter the name of each appliance, its power rating and how long it is switched on for. The spreadsheet can calculate how much each appliance costs to run and indeed estimate your electricity bill. Pupils can explore this model, looking at ways to cut their electricity bill. See Becta's Enhancing Science with IT pack for a worked example of this, complete with a pupil worksheet - it's at the UK Virtual Teachers Centre. Electronics - Crocodile Clips (age 14-18) and Edison (10-16)In Crocodile Clips (Disc for PC - CrocClips) you can build circuits starting with simple ones with batteries and bulbs and leading on to complex ones with electronic components. Meters can be placed in the circuits and outputs can be fed to an oscilloscope. It's a virtual lab - no substitute for the real thing but nevertheless one that presents opportunities to explore in a unique way - perhaps by testing components to destruction. This would suit pupils from age 14 while another program Edison (PC - and maybe hard to source) performs a similar role with younger pupils. This has some very intuitive circuit building which pupils from age 10 could use. Motion: Interactive Physics (age 15+)Allows you to build and play with models. So you could draw a ball and then let it drop down the screen. Or you could draw a box underneath it and watch it bounce on it. You could change the material of the block, or change the gravity. You can even hang the ball from a string or a spring and graph the effect. Environments or models where you can change velocity, gravity and so-on. (Mac/IBM) From www.fable.co.uk The Way Things Work (age 11-14)Based on David Macaulay's book, this shows how more than 200 inventions work. Examples include the battery, the electric motor, and the photocopier. Pupils can browse pages and gain explanations of scientific principles. Terms such as electrons are described and a few working models - such as the mixing of coloured light are particularly useful, as well as being humorous. An inventors book shows who invented what and a history section shows the inventions on a time line. This is stimulating material which might not be out of place in a school library (Dorling Kindersley PC; Apple) Encarta (age 11-adult)An all purpose encyclopaedia with surprising depth of information on many subjects. For example, a search for say, salt or neutralisation yields a good deal of detail. The pictures and words here might be used in worksheets or pupils projects, although the language level is around the age 16-18 mark. (PC; Apple) Crocodile Clips Circuit simulator
(age 11-18, for Mac/PC from Crocodile Clips) - circuit diagrams and experiments.
Price £***. Elementary version is on the web.
Edison 3 circuit simulator (age 11-18, for PC from Quickroute Ltd) - circuit diagrams and experiments. Prefer this to Crocodile Clips at age 11-15. Price £**
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