Web Watch

Carl Mungan, United States Naval Academy
mungan@usna.edu

The Atlantic magazine has a technology webpage at http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/.

The website http://stemcareer.com/ exists to promote jobs in science and technology. Also check out the National Informal STEM Education network at http://www.nisenet.org/.

A well-organized collection of the best science blogs is online at http://scienceblogs.com/. Johns Hopkins has a blog on innovative instructional practices athttp://ii.library.jhu.edu/. Also see New Zealand’s SciBlogs at http://sciblogs.co.nz/.

Periodically it is useful to review the Khan Academy tutorials in physics at https://www.khanacademy.org/science/physics.

An article from ScienceNews discusses the thermodynamics of nanoscale heat engines at https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ultrasmall-engines-bend-second-law-thermodynamics. Also see the article on simultaneously maximizing power and efficiency of a heat engine at http://phys.org/news/2016-05-geometric-simultaneously-maximizes-power-efficiency.html.

A useful resource to electronically send large computer files is http://www.dropsend.com/.

Chalkdust at http://chalkdustmagazine.com/ is described as a magazine for the mathematically curious.

You have probably seen kids practicing the water-bottle-flipping trick. Videos and an explanation of the physics are online at http://www.vox.com/2016/5/26/11785562/water-bottle-flip-physics.

Giphy at http://giphy.com/create/gifmaker is a tool to create animated GIFs from videos such as YouTube.

MIT has a helpful set of links to online physics resources at https://blossoms.mit.edu/resources/physics_resources. Similarly the Space Science Institute has online astronomy resources at http://www.spacescience.org/educationresources.php.

Teaching tools for STEM education with particular focus on the Next Generation Science Standards are available at http://stemteachingtools.org/. University of Cambridge resources for teaching A-level math are organized into a subway-style map starting at https://undergroundmathematics.org/.

NOVA’s interactive archives on physics and math are worth a browse at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/hotscience/int_phys.html.

Voyant has a tool to analyze your technical writing in various ways at http://voyant-tools.org/. For example, it creates a colorful map of keywords that might enhance your next powerpoint presentation.

APS is changing from PACS codes for journal articles to Subject Headings, as described at https://physh.aps.org/about.

NSF has a set of 62 science videos showcased online at http://stemforall2016.videohall.com/presentations#/keyword/ids=k_111.

Got Science is an online publication of tech news at http://www.gotscience.org/category/physics-on-gotscience/.

An optomechanical transducer that converts signals between optical, acoustic, and radio frequencies is described at http://phys.org/news/2016-03-multilingual-circuit-optomechanical-transducer-links.html.

Stanford and UBC have an article about improving critical thinking in the introductory lab course at http://news.stanford.edu/2015/08/17/thinking-holmes-wieman-081715/.

Finally, Rhett Allain analyzes one’s ideal running speed to conserve energy at https://www.wired.com/2016/09/whats-ideal-running-speed-conserve-energy/.

Disclaimer – The articles and opinion pieces found in this issue of the APS Forum on Education Newsletter are not peer refereed and represent solely the views of the authors and not necessarily the views of the APS.