Welcome! to Version 2.0 of this website. Desirable features and content to augment this site are set to come on-stream at intervals over the next two years. Now you will find a minimum useful set of tools and content ported to the Web with the least possible delay.
The highlight of this Demonstration Database (left frame) is its photographs (1R20.15, for instance). These were mostly exposed twenty-five years ago in exquisite detail and perspective with 4x5-inch Polaroid Type 55 instant negative/positive film and a view camera. Only about one-tenth of the demonstrations available on the shelves today, ready to use, were ever photographed this way (and thus included in this initial version of the database.) Digital still and video cameras will now be used to fill in the database with undocumented demonstrations, demonstrations fabricated and acquired over the last twenty-five years, audio-visual materials, and to replace eventually the black-and-white photos here. These 250 black-and-white photos scanned onto the Web nevertheless constitute a minimum set of demonstration images which will hopefully be useful to instructors planning lectures.
The written descriptions of demonstrations are generally poor, sketchily done, and contain many errors; editing them is a high priority.
The strategic design for this site is to be state-of-the art, robust, with capacity for growth to twenty or forty times its present size. The current, initial site has over a gigabyte of data on a Microsoft Windows 2000 Server with SQL Server 2000 coded in ASP 3.0, Active Server Pages scripting language. An unavoidable consequence is this site requires the current versions 5.0 or higher of Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape browser to display properly. While this site might not work well with the browser you are using now, the hope is that it will be functional with the browser you will be using three or four years from now, with minimal overhaul necessary to the site between now and then.
Among early features set to be added is secure logon to the site for University of Colorado, Boulder physics, astrophysics, and planetary science instructors. (Currently site administrators only can log on.) You would be able to click on a demonstration code to request it for a given date, time, and classroom. The database should inform you of any space-time conflicts with prior requests for that demonstration. Also you should be able to add your own comments on the utility or tricks to know to the web description of any demonstration. Until then please continue to write your requests into the log book in the Duane G2B78 office sixteen working hours in advance. Please email errors you find and suggestions for improvements.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Phillip Johnson, 1952-1995, University of Minnesota, created the first and only existing bibliographic computer database of physics lecture demonstrations. PIRA (Physics Instructional Resource Association) established the DCS (Digital Classification Scheme) Committee, to expand and edit standard classification codes and bibliographic entries. This classification code is used in this database. Keith Warren, formerly of the North Carolina State University Department of Physics, and Richard Berg, University of Maryland Department of Physics, created physics demonstration websites which were the models for this site. Bob Stoller, formerly of the University of Colorado, Boulder, Department of Physics, created most of the original, old, black-and-white photographs and written descriptions. Luke Wieczorek, UCB BS, Physics, 1998, did initial Access database design and data entry.
Sukumar Dwarkanath, UCB MS, Telecommunications, 2002, design and development of the site (version 1.0).
Sayantan Bhattacharya, UCB MS, Electrical Engineering, 2005, design and development of the site(version 2.0).
Thanks to the UCB Physics Department for providing resources and supporting this project. This site is accessible from the Department's Undergraduate Education webpage; click on "Learning Laboratories".
Michael Thomason, Director, Physics Learning Laboratories
University of Colorado, Boulder, Department of Physics
All Rights Reserved. Physics Learning Laboratories. University of Colorado at Boulder.