Unfortunately, physics is often awkwardly taught (too many teachers mistake silence for comprehension), so it is important to have resources to learn concepts interactively at an individual pace.
The Physics Classroom is an interesting website directed at high school physics students. It's pretty basic, but covers typical high school physics curriculum. The site is divided into 3 areas: tutorials explaining core principles, a multimedia "studio", and a help area that covers basic classroom skills such as using a graphing calculator.
The Advantages
- Topic coverage is generally complete for high school students in the United States (first year only for most Canadian students)
- The material is also good if you need a little help with a first semester college physics course
- Explanations are rudimentary, and are easier to understand than what is found in a typical textbook
- There are plenty of questions with answers and explanations
- Included animations clearly illustrate important concepts
- All site content is freely available
- The site is designed to accommodate low-end users
- Topics are broken down further into lessons
The Disadvantages
- Some of the pages are lengthy and overwhelming
- The diagrams and animations are a bit low-tech and grainy
- The site doesn't take advantage of the potential of Flash animations
This is a good site to use as a supplement if you are a student and are feeling a bit lost in class.
Katharine M. J. Osborne - Ever since I was child I've been asking questions about physics, what is a particle, what is mass, what is the shape of the universe, what ...
