Java Programming
and
Internet Technologies for Undergraduate Education
Wolfgang Christian Davidson College Davidson, NC 28036 |
|---|
| Although it is somewhat of a cliché that the Internet is revolutionizing
education, it is still not common to find physics simulations that make use of Internet
technologies. Physicists trained in procedural languages, such as Fortran, are often
unfamiliar with object-oriented techniques and uninterested in page layout. They are more
interested in computational speed than in code reuse or in interface design. But adopting
Internet technologies for teaching need not detract from the teaching of computational
physics. A good example of this approach is the set of small scriptable Java applets-we
call them Physlets-developed by students and faculty at Davidson College. Students are
still taught to program using canonical techniques such as RK4. Finished assignments are
embedded into HTML documents and published from a student's home page. Well-designed
applets can communicate with browsers by employing a scripting language such as
JavaScript. Scripting allows one applet to be used for many different types of contexts
thereby allowing the student to validate the correctness of the applet and to learn
additional physics. The strengths and weaknesses of the Java programming language for
various types of projects will be discusses and examples of Java and JavaScript will be
presented. This project is generously supported by NSF, DUE-9752365. |
