Web-based Initiatives in Physics and Materials Education

a: Tools and Java Applets

• A few years ago, web-course developers in the Materials area considered joining in the Materials Education Library, initiated and run by Darcy Clark at the University of Michigan; Darcy has now returned to Australia as a web-consultant. But the question of whether there should be such an initiative, for example under the auspices of the Materials Research Society, is under active consideration under the chairmanship of Steve Yalisove.
• Java Applets for semiconductors are being developed by Chu Wie at the University of Buffalo. This site also contains many links to semiconductor groups and semiconductor education.
• If you are interested in semiconductor devices, you can consult the International Sematech organization, and absorb the idea of the Roadmap, which gets updated from time to time. By consulting these websites, one gets a strong impession of how many related industries try to march in step, in order to get the benifits of standardization and inter-operability. I have made some further comments, in connection with Chapter 9 of my book, to set these points in context.
• Wolfgang Christian has developed general applets, called Physlets in the context of WebPhysics at Davidson College. His book, with Mario Belloni, Physlet Physics, contains a CD with many examples including quantum physics. The new Physlet® Quantum Physics: An Interactive Introduction is also available. Wolfgang was one of invited speakers at the 5th Workshop on Multimedia in Physics Teaching and Learning in Vienna, Austria in October, 2000, and at several meetings since then. The Davidson group is currently concentrating on Open-source Physics.
• The 2001 and 2002 workshop programs, and other information and reports are available. The 2003 Workshop took place in September in Prague, Czech Republic. The 9th workshop was held in Graz, Austria in September, 2004, and the 10th workshop has just taken place at the Free University, Berlin, Germany in October 2005.
• Virtual practical 'experiments' (Virtuelles praktikum) are being developed by Martin Stachel for the Fortgeschrittenerpraktikum at the University of Konstanz in Germany. Most of this site can be used to improve your German, but it also includes a Java-based lock-in amplifier explained in English.
• The Matter project, originated by Peter Goodhew of the University of Liverpool, supplies modules and CD-roms about individual topics in Materials Science and Engineering. I feel these modules are very useful, amongst other uses, as a crash conversion course for pure scientists moving into the interdisciplinary materials area as graduate students.
• Peter Goodhew is also the director of the UK Centre for Materials Education, which sponsors materials education research, and provides many links. This center is now part of the UK-wide Higher Education Academy, which has a Physical Sciences Centre. Not surprisingly, most of the physical sciences projects are related to undergraduate studies.

b: Web-based resources on Quantum Physics and related topics

• A Java Applet for solving the Schroedinger equation has been developed by Kevin Schmidt of ASU and Michael Lee of Kent State.
• There are many nice Quantum Physics Applets in both French and English, prepared by Manuel Joffre of the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. This site is very impressive and highly interactive.
• I am developing some Quantum Physics Resources this semester in this area with my students in Quantum Physics.
• You may get there before we do by visiting the World Lecture Hall and choosing Chemistry or Physics, or try an advanced search, which can sometimes be a bit too selective. Or you can consult the Compadre Quantum Exchange project, which is a rather formal list being produced in the States by AAPT and NSF. There is an interesting tension between these types of list, with disclaimers, copyright, and all such issues, and the one you are currently reading. I find the amateurs often get there first, but of course they are responsible to no-one but themselves, and eventually...
• A further (now obvious) choice is to search the web using the wonderful Google search engine, type in something specific such as Quantum Physics + course, and you will be amazed what you find. (If you are a gambler at heart, type in "Quantum Physics" + course, and hit "I'm feeling lucky". Isn't that great?)
• And, No, I don't get paid by any of these people.

c: Web-based and web-enhanced courses on Surfaces, Thin Films and related topics

• A course on Catalysis was developed a few years ago by Per Stoltze in Denmark, which had excellent figures and used Java Applets as interactive examples, but the link has now disappeared. My own Surfaces and Thin Films course has neither of these features, but still represents a lot of work. In my case the webnotes have been turned into a teaching book with an additional "Introduction to" in the title. I think was planning to do the same, but maybe it just didn't work out that way.
• Other courses at various levels related to surface science and materials engineering are being developed by Philip Moriarty at Nottingham Unversity, UK, by Furio Ercolessi at SISSA at Trieste, Italy, by David Marx at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale and by Roger Nix at Queen Mary College, London. Philip's course uses cross references to the last three courses, with the authors' permission, thus really building on the collaborative nature of the web. This, potentially, is a most interesting development, which represents a positive sum game for the students; however, most of these courses have not been updated recently, so maybe enthusiasm has peaked.
• Hellmut Föll of the University of Kiel in Germany, has a very nice course on Defects in Crystals, with excellent diagrams and high resolution electron micrographs of dislocations and grain boundaries. There is discussion of these and many other topics.
• The Department of Crystallography at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK offers several Internet Courses, including an Advanced Certificate in Principles of Protein Structure, which uses online resources such as Protein Crystallography. The latest course was offered in 2004-05 and the current website indicates that it is offered again in 2005-06. Early versions won Internet prizes and offered sample pictures of Space Groups. The atlas of space groups has since been issued as a CD for the bargain price of 10 pounds sterling!