TPT WebSights column draft for December, 2007:

WebSights features announcements and reviews of select sites of interest to physics teachers.  All sites are copyright by their authors.  This column is available as a web page at <http://PhysicsEd.BuffaloState.Edu/pubs/WebSights/>.

If you have successfully used a physics website that you feel is outstanding and appropriate for WebSights, please email me the URL and describe how you use it to teach or learn physics.  The best site monthly will receive a T-shirt. <macisadl@buffalostate.edu>.

The 2007 Nobel Prize for Physics Giant Magnetoresistance explanations:
<
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2007/> awarded to Albert Fert (Universite Paris-Sud) and Peter Grunberg (Forschungszentrum Julich).  Official Nobel descriptions at introductory (public) and scientific levels of the effect now universally exploited in computer hard drives.  The Nobel website is a treasure trove of approachable physics history and worth suggesting for student projects.
Submitted to PHYS-L by Bob Sciamanda <
trebor@winbeam.com>.

Two New Free-Access Peer-Reviewed Professional Physics Research Journals: PhysMath Physics A and B:
<
http://www.physmathcentral.com/> these journals charge the scientists publishing the manuscripts.  The journals may be of interest to advanced students, or those wishing to see how physics research is published.  For example, new work on dark matter is seen at <http://www.physmathcentral.com/pmcphysa>.
Submitted by Chris Leonard of PMC
<chris.leonard@physmathcentral.com>. 

More web videos for teaching Physics:
Dr. Ralph McGrew of Broome Community College Physics writes that he uses very short video clips from America's Funniest Home Videos to teach physics from <http://abc.go.com/primetime/afv/index>.   Here are his ten suggested clips, roughly in the order in which they might be used in a physics course:

- Newton's first law: In Bike ramp crash, under Mishaps, gallery 1, a cyclist continues moving straight ahead at constant speed after his bicycle suddenly stops.
- Newton's first and second laws: In Bulldog slides,
under Top rated, gallery 24, an animal has difficulty leaving a frozen pond.
- Newton's second law: Dog plane float,
under Pets and animals, gallery 1, shows an unconstrained, imperturbable dog in free fall in the cockpit of a light airplane.
- Circular motion: In Dog drags baby,
under Babies, gallery 1, a tenacious dog causes the centripetal acceleration of a baby revolving in a walker. This situation contrasts nicely with Dog pulls toy car, under Pets and animals, gallery 8, in which the animal causes changes in speed as well as direction.
- Newton's third law: In Crib blanket teamwork,
under Kids, gallery 5, each child pulling on a blanket moves himself as well as the other child. In Dorm chair hit, under Teens, gallery 1, a girl safely jumps straight up from a wheeled chair, but sends it backward at high speed when she jumps upward and forward.
- Center of mass: In Dump truck tips,
under Mishaps, gallery 1, an unloading truck tips backward.
- A metastable system: Egg explodes,
under Kids, gallery 3, features an egg warmed in its shell in a microwave oven.
- Static electricity: Charged with a blanket, the Static electricity dog,
under Pets and animals, gallery 4, has its long hair reveal its radial electric field.

McGrew writes: The amusing and interesting videos are more surprising to students than to physics teachers.  They are presented without narration by the program host.  Those listed above are between 12 s and 45 s duration.  It is easy to show a video more than once.  Students think of the phenomena as "real-word" or everyday-life applications.  They use only familiar devices, but would be cumbersome to set up at full scale in a classroom.  They reveal that living creatures are described by the same mechanical laws as blocks and rocks.  Students may themselves show the clips to others and explain them.

The editor has also been watching physics videos from Japan on Google and Yahoo (there are apparently popular physics TV shows in Japan), particularly the water bottle rocket jetpack at <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6943201001782160188> and the vector baseball pitching machine at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPHoUbCNPX8>

Submitted by Ralph McGrew <mcgrew_r@sunybroome.edu> and the Editor.