A Cool Tool for School: HyperPhysics

As an aspiring Physics teacher, I know the difficulty of grasping and retaining the ideas of Physics, basically applying high level mathematics to these already vague concepts of our Universe.  Not every mind is easily attuned to the Universe, myself included, but many resources exist to help clarify the ambiguity of the world.  HyperPhysics is among the most powerful tools I have found thus far.

HyperPhysics (HP) is a resource that I can envision for both myself and future students.  The site has three main functions that I find especially useful: unit conversion, interactive visual aides, and detailed articles (in increasing importance). 

HPcontains a page for unit conversion that not only provides the factors for conversion, but allows for input and immediate output of a conversion factor.  An example would be, "How many feet are in 60.54 meters?" in which one would normally write out that 1 meter is equal to 3.28 feet, and then perform the multiplication of 60.54 meters times 3.28 feet to get 198.57 feet.  However, HP can do this calculation in an instant.

Second, HP features incredible visual aides that establish the relationship of how one concept relates to another.  They do this by creating an interactive web of ideas that display how one concept trickles down into an incredibly detailed aspect of the big idea.  An example is the following web of light and vision concepts, some of which even I have no idea what they are.  Each bubble leads to a specific article on the content of the bubble. Light and Vision refers to the Propagation of Light, then reflection, which is seen in mirrors, then mirror instruments, which leads to fiber optics, and finally absorption.  It is through this web that the relevance of each topic is greatly understood.

Lastly, HP has the most extensive and organized articles on these topics that I have seen.  Articles are interactive and informative, while they keep conciseness and relevance to the overall web they're in.  The articles also contain links to other important ideas that may or may not be crucial.  I can't really write much more about how great this resource is; two sentences is all I need to show that this resource is bomb-diggity.

I would use this in the classroom as a tool for myself to keep the conciseness of each lesson and refer to these sources for students with questions.  This resource is ubiquitous to the user and unlimited in use.  As one of the few science education majors and the only undergraduate Physics education major, this resource, though not relevant to many others, is something I highly recommend.