Resources

Sites for teachers

Primary teachers

The following sites have hands-on activities for children with explanations:

• Marvin and Milo explore simple physics experiments.
• Physics Central has hands-on activities at Physics@Home, Activity Books and comic books with related experiments at PhysicsQuest.
• The San Francisco Exploratorium has useful resources including:
  • Experiments using easily available materials at Exploratorium Snacks and a range of science activities with instructions, concept maps and links to additional resources at Exploratorium AfterSchool.
  • Resources including hands-on activities, videos, websites and apps which can be browsed by topic or by type at Exploratorium Explore.
• Steve Spangler Science and Bill Nye the Science Guy both have good collections of simple experiments.
• The Colorado State University’s Little Shop of Physics has ideas for experiments and activities.

Other sites:

• HowStuffWorks has good explanations of how things work.
• Annenberg Learner has physics-related interactives such as Amusement Park Physics, Cat-Traption (energy transfers) and Colored Shadows.
• The Science Learning Hub has examples of science in different contexts from around New Zealand.
• Nasa Kid’s Club has games and activities for children.
• CERNland has explanations of research at CERN, games and videos.
• Physics.org best five websites for kids.
• Create-A-Graph is a simple to use web-based tool for drawing graphs.
• Resource for simple machines (Thank you to Alyssa for suggesting this site)

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Secondary teachers

NZ-based resources

• An A2-sized poster on circular motion produced by the Physics Department at Otago University.
• More posters from the Physics Department at Otago University:
  Rutherford's Atom and
  LCR Circuits
• The NZIP Education Section has many resources relevant to NCEA Physics. (Password protected, fee applies.) It also has a list of useful links and other resources.
• Victoria University of Wellington New Zealand Physics Teachers’ Resource Bank has a collection of experiments and demonstrations, including resources in Te Reo Māori.
• The Science Academy website has discussions and resources relevant to NCEA level 3 Physics.
• The Science Learning Hub has examples of science in different contexts from around New Zealand.

Other resources

• A partnership of The American Association of physics Teachers (AAPT), the American Astronomical Society (AAS), the American Institute of Physics/Society of Physics Students (APS/SPS), and the American Physical Society (APS) run comPADRE to share and disseminate a wide range of resources created by physics educators. For teachers, it provides a portal to three collections: The Physics Front, Physics to Go, an on-line mini-magazine and collection of websites, and the Physical Sciences Resource Centre.
• Another US-based on-line portal is physlink.
• Open Source Physics has resources to engage students in physics, computation and computer modeling.
• The UK-based Institute of Physics offers both curriculum based support for teachers and extra-curricular resources and activities, including videos of its Schools Lecture Series.
• The PhET project at the University of Colorado has a range of simulations demonstrating physical concepts along with teaching ideas contributed by teachers.
• Outreach at the Cavendish Laboratory has descriptions of some of the key experiments in modern physics including J.J. Thomson’s discovery of the electron, Rutherford’s discovery of the nucleus, the Wilson Cloud Chamber, x-ray diffraction by crystals, the mass spectrograph, the discovery of the neutron, the Cockroft-Walton experiment, the discovery of DNA and the discovery of pulsars.
• MIT Open Course Ware has a Highlights for High School page that selects the Open Course Ware resources most likely to be useful to secondary school teachers and students. MIT also has Professor Walter Lewin’s famous For the Love of Physics video and a set of short demonstrations available on YouTube.
• Optics4kids links to websites and multi-media resources and has a gallery of optical illusions.
• CERN has resources for teachers ranging from the whimsical The Amazing World of Atoms to a teaching module designed to teach concepts in physics via units on anti-matter.
• The Perimeter Institute has multi-media resources, mostly relating to quantum physics and relativity.
• Plus Magazine aims to introduce people to the beauty and the practical applications of mathematics. It offers a Teacher Package: Classical Mechanics suitable for years 12 and 13.
• Elevator Physics is a great source of information about the laws of motion.

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General interest

As well as the resources listed above, some useful resources are:

• The Science Media Centre has science news and briefings.
• The American Institute of Physics supports Inside Science, a site that looks at science in the news.
• A New Zealand website dedicated to the life and achievements of Ernest Rutherford.
• TED Talks have talks relevant to physics.
• The Royal Institution has the RI Channel, which includes recent Christmas Lectures as well as a special collection celebrating the centenary of the discovery of x-ray diffraction by crystals by W.L. Bragg and W.H.Bragg. The Christmas Lecture Archive is on the main Royal Institution site.
• The Royal Society of New Zealand has a collection of videos of public lectures.
• The Royal Society also has videos of its public events.
• The National Academy of Sciences Distinctive Voices Collection has videos relevant to physics.
• The Kavli Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara has videos of its public lectures, including Bill Phillips’ talk ‘Time, Einstein and the Coolest Stuff in the Universe’, if you missed it when he was in Dunedin.
• The American Physical Society has resources for Physics Enthusiasts and an online magazine, Physics with highlights of research published in APS journals.
• The Physics World website, sponsored by the Institute of Physics has physics news.
• You can follow the Institute of Physics on Facebook.
• The Division of Sciences at the University of Otago has a Science for non-scientists page with links relevant to climate change.
• The BBC has two radio programmes that are available as podcasts: In Our Time, in which Melvin Bragg coaxes a panel of four experts to explain their specialist subject to a general audience, and The Life Scientific, in which Jim Al-Khalili, Professor of Physics and Professor of Public Engagement at the University of Surrey, interviews scientists about their life and work.

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