Web Watch

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

The New Yorker had the article Did Benjamin Franklin Fly That Kite? at https://bit.ly/36RtcBu.

A Mac tool for drawing electric fields and equipotentials is Franklin at http://highcliffsoftware.com/.

Beneath the Waves at http://museum.wa.gov.au/btw/ is an interactive look at one of Australia’s magnificent marine environments.

A free online tool for drawing chemistry apparatus is https://chemix.org/. It has lots of items such as beakers, balances, jacks, syringes, and other things that physicists also use.

Nature had an interesting pair of columns recently: Thirteen tips for a biologist engaging with physicists at https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03960-z and Twelve tips for a physicist engaging with biologists at https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03961-y.

The Cheese Science Toolkit at https://www.cheesescience.org/ provides a deep dive into the science behind cheesemaking.

If you have a Mac, you probably use Time Machine to do backups. Occasionally it has issues. An in-depth examination of everything about this program starts at https://eclecticlight.co/2019/12/03/time-machine-1-how-it-works-or-fails-to/.

I recently read Eileen Pollack’s book about why there are so few women in physics. A NYT article she wrote is at https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/why-are-there-still-so-few-women-in-science.html?

Statistics related to women in STEM are discussed at https://www.catalyst.org/research/women-in-science-technology-engineering-and-mathematics-stem/.

In these days of online courses, screencasting is a valuable tool. Some video recording and editing tools can be found at https://screencast-o-matic.com/.

Socrative is an online clicker system with various plans (starting with a good free one) available at https://socrative.com/plans/.

If you use Google Forms, the timing and assessment tools at https://timify.me/ may prove helpful.

A site devoted to real world physics problems for the intro courses is https://www.real-world-physics-problems.com/.

The current trend is against standardized testing but IQ tests can nevertheless be fun, such as at https://iqtestprep.com/.

A visual examination of water stress across the USA is online at https://thewatercrisis.us/.

Is it possible to make panels that generate electricity at night? Consider the anti-solar panels discussed at https://www.inverse.com/innovation/researchers-have-a-counterintuitive-concept-for-solar-panels-that-work-at-night.

Harvard maintains a rich science blog at http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/.

A mathematical proof of the universal scaling law of turbulence is considered at https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematicians-prove-batchelors-law-of-turbulence-20200204/.

DIY Science Activities are presented at https://carnegiestemgirls.org/stem-activities/activities/.

JoVE physics education videos are online at https://www.jove.com/science-education-library/29/physics-ii.

1001 Arabic inventions are graphically presented at https://www.1001inventions.com/.

The principle of least action is explored at http://www.cleonis.nl/physics/phys256/least_action.php.

Resources to integrate argumentation into K-12 science classes are available at http://www.argumentationtoolkit.org/.

New Zealand has the Science Learning Hub online at https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/topics.

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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.