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A didactic project is being developed using multimedia techniques at the Physics Department of the University of Bologna to help both students and teachers. The ISHTAR WWW server comprises several courses on different chapters of physics and a set of tools for helping with the didactical activities. The level of the courses is adapted for students in their last years at high school and in their first years at university, and it is especially designed for students of the life sciences.

Mobile phones are very useful devices. One can phone with them and one can also use them to reach and teach students in high schools as well as in universities. To this end, with an example, the feasibility of the approach was demonstrated. A science simulation using the processing power of the phone was also shown.

The ability to simulate several aspects of two-dimensional quantum mechanics is discussed, in conjunction with an ongoing visualization project, WebTOP, that has been of recognizable importance to physics education since its inception in the late 1990s. In the past, the WebTOP project has been primarily used as a means of visualizing optics and wave phenomena and, now, the development of certain interactive quantum mechanical demonstrations has the potential to strengthen its power as an educational tool for the physics community. The added functionality for propagating wave packets forward in time for a given 2D potential gives rise to the ability to investigate interesting quantum behaviors. Fractional revivals of states in the 2D infinite square well can be clearly seen as well as the time delay of scattered wave packets for certain step potentials. Aspects of squeezed and coherent states of the 2D harmonic oscillator potential can also be explored, among other observable phenomena.

Coarse-grained analysis enhances our understanding of complex processes such as physical procedures, economic complexity. We collect the data sets from 31 regions of China in terms of the gross regional domestic product (GRDP) and the expense invested in Education and R&D between 1998 and 2013, then employ the coarse-grained method to analyze the causal direction according to the cross-section data with time-series information. Specifically, the empirical results suggest that the share of the GRDP invested in Education and R&D in large time scale reveals a dynamical process due to economic complexity, but limits around to base lines.

We illustrate the use of World Wide Web technologies for the teaching of general science topics to undergraduate non-science majors. The newly developed course, Science for the 21st Century, consists of modules each presenting scientific topics of current interest and broad appeal. Network- and computer-based tools are used by instructors to: 1) present multimedia material in lectures; 2) produce and store Web-based modules; 3) communicate notices about the course. Students use computers to: 1) access and review lecture material; 2) explore information sources (located on our server or elsewhere) for term projects and homework assignments; 3) obtain information about the course and communicate with instructors. We describe our experiences with this course and formulate some general conclusions which might be of interest to others wishing to use network-based resources for teaching.

The World Wide Web originated within the high-energy physics community from the need to exchange documentation in an efficient way. It can be used easily to produce and maintain didactic material for teaching physics. The material can be made accessible via the network in hypertext form, comprising text, pictures, animations, audio files. For didactic applications in physics, the capability of an interactive link, beyond the use of simple electronic forms is necessary. This was not foreseen in the original WWW protocol, and it has been developed in an application presented here to simulate a series of measurements in a diffusion process in solutions. The recent introduction of the Java language offers a natural way to create new powerful interactive Internet applications. We are currently developing and testing Java powered didactic applications.