Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Students love video demonstrations

Today I gave a lecture on first-order phase transitions to undergraduates. Again I find the students love the videos I show.
 I mostly use videos from the Video Encyclopedia of Physics Demonstrations, which I got my dept. to buy a decade ago. However, now you can find virtually anything you need on YouTube! For example, here is a nice one of regelation of ice which demonstrates that the solid-liquid phase boundary has a negative slope.

3 comments:

  1. As a student, I can confirm that we do love videos. It seems like you're talking about videos of demonstrations, but I also like videos of math and theory. Often a theory requires you to visualize some sort of space in some sort of framework, and a video can concretely set you off in the right direction. I maintain that most misunderstandings come different mental pictures.

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  2. From the regelation of ice video I found these video demonstrations by Dr. Derek Muller:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM3zP72-rJE
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQCVnjGUv24
    I found them a little more slickly made, and slightly more clear.

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  3. Thanks for the comments.

    Ted, I agree the videos illustrating concepts are also very useful. Thats why I like the Solid State Simulations programs.

    piprodo01, thanks for the other recommendation. I agree it is superior.

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