Diffusion phenomena and other WWW applications for an introductory physics course

摘要

The World Wide Web originated within the high-energy physics community from the need to exchange documentation in an efficient way. It can be used easily to produce and maintain didactic material for teaching physics. The material can be made accessible via the network in hypertext form, comprising text, pictures, animations, audio files. For didactic applications in physics, the capability of an interactive link, beyond the use of simple electronic forms is necessary. This was not foreseen in the original WWW protocol, and it has been developed in an application presented here to simulate a series of measurements in a diffusion process in solutions. The recent introduction of the Java language offers a natural way to create new powerful interactive Internet applications. We are currently developing and testing Java powered didactic applications.