| Supplied Information: |
Physics by Pictures is an educational courseware package suitable for high school and revision at first year tertiary level. It consists of a reference book and a set of computer programs. It includes colourful computer simulations from Mechanics, Thermodynamics and Molecular Physics, Optics, Atomic Physics, as well as portraits and biographies of famous physicists, historical experiments, etc. Some of the packages distinguishing features include: simulations, games, testing, etc; a friendly interactive graphics interface; it is appealing to students. |
| Review: |
Physics by Pictures is a DOS based, first year, self-paced CAL package from Russia. The authors describe it as a reference book and a set of interactive simulations. One of the first things I noticed (and I assume students would) was the poor interface. Although the icons make navigation easy, the screens are very cluttered. Combined with an irritating flashing slider, clicking noises, poor English (at times), poor text formatting, inability to resize or move pop-up menus and occasional Russian sentences, this is quite distracting. This is a shame, since there is a comprehensive range of simulations from mechanics, electricity and magnetism, thermodynamics and molecular physics, optics, quantum mechanics and historical experiments (taken from the other sections). The simulations are generally helpful in terms of visualisation, with nice graphs, vectors, etc. They also have helpful help screens, are easy to use, and provide the screens Physics (background), You can (what you can do with the simulation), Attention (things to look for) and Questions. The result of the experiment is stated up front so the student doesnít actually ëdiscoverí anything for themselves, but simply ëprovesí the theory by running the experiment. Interactivity varies greatly. The Michelson-Morley experiment consists simply of changing the frequency of the cog wheel until the photons enter the detector. The allowed values are given, so what does the student learn?? The Circuit Constructor allows greater freedom for the student to explore and design. The quality of the questions vary from plug in the numbers to more conceptual questions, but the feedback is limited to either correct or incorrect. In short, I think this package is not as useful as it could be for students on their own, but could be used for lecture demonstrations. |
