The Physics of Everyday Life: Java Applets and Interactive Lecture Demonstrations for Non-science Students

该项目的目的是解决这样一个问题，即物理学，或者更具体地说，物理学课程，被广泛认为是困难的、令人不快的和不相关的，尽管物理学为许多现代技术提供了基础。这项工作的目的是改变本科物理课程的课程设置和呈现方法，使它们更受欢迎，更吸引人，更有效地提供对物理概念的广泛理解，因为它们适用于我们周围的世界。为实现这一目标所采取的方法是，首先为非理工科学生开发一门新颖的入门课程，该课程将建立在新教科书《How things work；日常生活的物理学”。交互式Java小程序和交互式讲座演示（ild）正在开发中，它们涵盖了本文中的主题，从而为这门新颖的课程提供了新颖的演示格式。applet和ild是科学教育研究表明对学生概念学习有重大贡献的两项创新。通过使用现成的技术，这些也可以在标准的大型讲座课程格式中轻松廉价地实现。面向非科学家的物理课程是专门针对这门课程的，因为它有能力接触到大量的学生，但与其他物理课程相比，在这门课程中引入这种激进变革的制度和学科障碍是非常低的。然而，这门课程的成功可能会导致其他本科物理课程采用类似的变化，并且正在开发的applet和ild可以同样很好地用于各种课程。这些applet和ild的开发大量利用了使PI成为非常成功的实验物理学家的相同技能，并且正在使用教育研究的标准技术评估它们的有效性。威利出版公司将大力推行这些创新的实施和发行。

The project aims to address the problem that physics, or more specifically physics courses, are widely held to be difficult, unpleasant, and irrelevant, even though physics provides the foundation of much of modern technology. The objective of this work is to change the curriculum and method of presentation of undergraduate physics courses to make them popular, engaging, and more effective at providing widespread understanding of physics concepts as they apply to the world around us. The approach that is being taken to achieve this goal is to first develop a novel introductory course for non-science students that will build on the unique curriculum put forth in the new textbook "How things work; the physics of everyday life". Interactive Java applets and interactive lecture demonstrations (ILDs) are being developed that cover the topics in this text, and thereby provide novel presentation formats to go with this novel curriculum. Applets and ILDs are two of the innovations that science education research has shown contribute substantially to student conceptual learning. Through the use of readily available technology these can also be easily and inexpensively implemented in the standard large lecture course format. The physics for nonscientists course is specifically targeted because it has the capability of reaching large numbers of students, but the institutional and disciplinary barriers to introducing such radical changes in it are uniquely low compared to other physics courses. However, demonstrated success in this course is likely to result in similar changes being adopted in the rest of the undergraduate physics curriculum, and the applets and ILDs being developed can be used equally well in a variety of courses. The development of these applets and ILDs heavily utilize the same skills that have made the PI a highly successful experimental physicist, and their effectiveness is being assessed using standard techniques of education research. The Wiley publishing company will vigorously pursue the implementation and distribution of these innovations.