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Multimedia tools in teaching physics
Grzegorz Karwasz
Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Trento Italy
Wiktor Niedzicki
Mechatronics Department,Technical University Warsaw, Poland
Anna Okoniewska, Eryk Rajch
Instytut Fizyki, Pomerianian Pedagogical Academy, Slupsk, Poland



GIREP Seminar
2003


By multimedia we mean both new-technology, multisense, virtual-object teaching tools (internet files, multimedia encyclopedia, subject paths and multimedia text books [1]) as well as non-virtual, colorful and easy-to-find objects, like Physics toys [2]. Grouping Physics objects into thematics, like:

  1. non-conservation laws (Celtic stone – rattleback, springing balls, self-inverting tippe-top [3])
  2. electricity sources (Volta piles from moneys, light-emitting diodes used as photovoltaic cells,Helmholtz coils turning in Earth’s magnetic field, piezoelectric lighters)
  3. optics of sky light (CD used as spectrometers, CD covers used as Brewster polarization analyzer, plastic pieces used as polaryzers) one stimulates students of pedagogical faculties (and not only) for searching on their own easy and cheap teaching tools.

A second step is then preparing virtual paths with these thematics, where the same in-vivo presentation becomes a virtual path, as a video-tape or interactive internet or CD-path. In particular, the advantage of the CD-path is that it allows more than one time performing the same experiment or showing conceptually easy, but difficult to repeat in the same way, experiments, like the fall of levitron [4].

[1] U.Amaldi, Fisica Interattiva, Meccanica, CD-ROM, Zanichelli Editore, Bologna, 1998
[2] V. Zanetti, I giocatoli e la scienza, Quaderni de La Fisica nella Scuola, 1994
[3] A.Kurowska, T.Wróblewski, G.P.Karwasz, Toys in Physics, in International SciMath Conference "Science and Mathematics Teaching for the Information Society", ed. by J. Turlo, Tempus JEP-12267, Proceedings of the Conference, Torun 2001, p. 285
[4] R. F. Gans, T. B. Jones, M. Washizu, J. Phys. D. 31 (1998) 671