Operating on both Macintosh and Windows (3.0, 3.1 & 95) platforms
Supported by the National Science Foundation under grant number MDR9054923.
Click here for Physics InfoMall Contents
The Physics InfoMall is a CD-ROM containing a large collection of physics resources for use by students and teachers. The information on the InfoMall is the equivalent of 35,000 pages of materials ranging from basic physical constants, to special interest topics, to templates for developing complete lessons.
This database is an information mall in the sense that a shopping center is a mall of consumer products. The InfoMall contains a variety of items from which to choose. It has textbooks, lab experiments, demonstrations, booklets, journal articles and many other documents. When a user enters the InfoMall, he or she may browse just as at a shopping mall. The teacher can enter the textbooks store by clicking on Textbook Trove, the problems store by clicking on Problems Place and so forth. When teachers have entered a store, they can look around and see what is available.
The Physics InfoMall contains a variety of materials that can help you with teaching. The major items are the goods in a store, namely the textbooks, lab manuals, etc. In addition, the entrance to the InfoMall has several options that can help with your teaching. From the InfoMall Entrance one can enter the "stores" in several different ways and have access to a calendar of events in the history of physics, tables of contents of major high school physics textbooks, a glossary of physics terms, an equations dictionary, and objectives for physics lessons. Any of these items can be used independently of the InfoMall database.
The Physics InfoMall contains:
- More than 1,000 demonstration and laboratory exercises in the Demo and Lab shop,
- More than 3,000 problems and solutions in the Problems Place,
- More than 3,000 articles from journals and magazines in the Articles and Abstracts Attic,
- Books that cover a wide range of topics from crystal growing to women in science in the Book Basement,
- The full text of 19 different highly regarded introductory level physics textbooks in the Textbook Trove,
- More than 100 equations linked to problems and graphics in the Equations Dictionary, and
- A historical Physics calendar that you can access.
Educators use the Physics InfoMall in many ways. A few of the most common activities include:
Supplementing Problem Sets
Texts often do not give enough problems for students to develop fully their algebra and physics skills. To address this situation a teacher can search through the Physics InfoMall and select any one of the 3,000 problems and solutions found in the Problems Place.
Selecting Demos and Labs
If a teacher is looking for just the right lab to offer your students, he/she can turn to the Demo and Lab Shop on the Physics InfoMall and browse through any one of the 1,000 activities.
Preparing Hand-Outs
Using the cut and paste feature on the Physics InfoMall, a teacher can quickly prepare background sheets and hand-outs for their students. They simply
- search the InfoMall for needed information
- select it
- place it into their own document
- print it out