CJTOnline.net

Welcome to CJTOnline.net. This is where I'm going to be collecting various links and resources to help people teach Physics. I welcome feedback and suggestions so if you have anything to say then email me at cjthornton@cjtonline.net . All the resources available for download on this site are original works produced by CJ Thornton. They are released under a Creative Commons Licence (see below). You may freely copy these files and use them for non-profit purposes as long as each is unaltered and gives me credit (each file contains the URL cjtonline.net quite visibly and I consider this to be acceptable credit as long as it is unaltered). If you wish to use my work for profit please contact me to discuss the matter.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 England & Wales License.

3D Animations

Firstly, I've recently learnt how to do 3D computer modelling, which I intend to use to show tricky concepts that pupils often find difficult. My first model is an animation to show how to connect the brushes of a simple motor, since projecting a simplified, animated image is much clearer than any alternative. Click the image below to download it.

I'm going to begin modelling other situations that are difficult to visualise or explain with stationary diagrams and post them here as and when I've finished them. If you have any suggestions I'd love to hear them. Email me at cjthornton@cjtonline.net with your ideas.

Recommended Software

I'd like to recommend two pieces of free software to help you teach about Earth and Space:

Celestia - http://www.shatters.net/celestia - a detailed, working model of the solar system, all to scale. You can tour around the solar system at will, or you can write programs ("scripts") to automate the process. I've prepared some scripts (full tour of the Solar System, explanation of the seasons, etc.), including captions, and a quick-start guide, all on my Celestia Page.
Stellarium - http://www.stellarium.org - a working planetarium that lets you set the location, date, time, time rate (useful for watching the Sun progress across the sky at different times of year, etc.).

Links

An awesome site is http://www.falstad.com/mathphysics.html - it features a ton of detailed physics simulations that are also free. I particularly like the ripple tank, since it's one piece of equipment that is incredibly unreliable and difficult to interpret in real life. All simulations can be run directly from the website or downloaded onto standalone computers.

http://www.visionlearning.com/library/module_viewer.php?c3=&mid=59&l - Nuclear fission and fusion.

http://school.discovery.com/schooladventures/skywatch/howto/planisphere1.html - A simple planisphere for lower-ability pupils to allow them to identify constellations.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~dgs/alway/planisphere.htm - A more detailed planisphere for higher-level pupils.

http://www.seeingscience.cclrc.ac.uk/home.aspx - Seeing Science; a selection of images, resources, practical activities and teacher notes relevant to KS3 and KS4, collected by British particle accelerators like the synchrotron radiation source at Daresbury.

http://www.scitech.ac.uk/Home.aspx - The Science and Technology Facilities Council. Check under Public and Schools for a selection of free resources, details of funding grants for activities, information about borrowing moon rocks or getting an expert to visit your school, and other useful stuff.

http://www.particledetectives.net/html/main.html - A Large Hadron Collider simulator and assosciated resources.

If you're looking for my old Web Design pages, they can be found at cjtonline.net/school.