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Computer Intensive Physics Robert G. Fuller

Portugal Conference

March 6, 19982 University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Computer Intensive Physics by

Robert G. Fuller Department of Physics and Astronomy University of Nebraska - Lincoln (to be published in the Proceedings of the National Conference on Science in Education and in Life, Lisboa, Portugal, March 6, 1998.) This is my first visit to Portugal. I want to thank the conference organizing committee for inviting me. When I left Nebraska last Saturday it was a zero degrees Celsius and it was snowing at the airport so to come to Lisbon at this time is a wonderful experience. In the abstract packet for the conference is an article of references about ideas from cognitive studies that help us teach physics (Fuller, 1998). There is also a pamphlet of references to innovative physics teaching programs in the United States and many of those programs have world-wide web sites so you can access information about those programs from Portugal (O'Kuma, 1998). I want to talk about my research project last year, which I now call "Computer Intensive Physics", but it really started out as paper-less physics.

I am going to discuss a physics course I taught from January to May 1997, which used no paper. I believe it is the first time since the invention of the printing press that a physicist has taught a physics course and used no paper. Here are the names of my collaborators (See Figure 1). If you want to see our present lessons you can get access to them on the www site for classes at the University of Nebraska, http://www-class.unl.edu/phys211/.

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