Open Source Physics

Open Source Physics, or OSP, is a project sponsored by the National Science Foundation and Davidson College, whose mission is to spread the use of open source code libraries that take care of a lot of the heavy lifting for physics: drawing and plotting, differential equation solvers, exporting to animated GIFs and movies, etc., tools, and compiled simulations for physics and other numerical simulations . The OSP collection provides curriculum resources that engage students in physics, computation, and computer modeling. The code library is in the Java programming language and licensed with GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) licenses. The site now serves over 10,000 visitors per month. The Open Source Physics Project is an extension of the Physlet Project.

Sub-projects

They have four projects with this purpose.

  • OSP libraries: Java code libraries for numerical simulations. The OSP code library was created to meet the need by the broader science education community for a synthesis of curriculum development, computational physics, computer science, and physics education that will be useful for scientists and students wishing to write their own simulations and develop their own curricular material. OSP code library is described in the OSP User's Guide by Wolfgang Christian in An Introduction to Computer Simulation Methods by Harvey Gould, Jan Tobochnik, and Wolfgang Christian.
  • Easy Java Simulations (EJS) (New name: Easy JavaScript Simulations = EjsS): A free and open source computer-based modeling environment used to generate automatically Java and JavaScript code. Easy JavaScript Simulations is an authoring and modeling tool that allows users to create Java or JavaScript programs with minimal programming. EjsS creates programs that other people can easily inspect or modify.
  • Tracker: A free and open source video analysis program. Tracker is an image and video analysis package and modeling tool that is built upon the Open Source Physics Java code library. Features include object tracking with position, velocity and acceleration overlays and graphs, special effect filters, multiple reference frames, calibration points and line profiles for analysis of spectra and interference patterns. It is designed to be used in introductory college physics labs and lectures.
  • OSP Curricular Development: A set of programs, packages, and worksheets for the teaching of advanced physics topics. Many instructors do not teach (or do research in) computational physics. For these instructors they have made the various physical models available in an easily accessible, modifiable, and distributable form for teaching of physics. For convenience, OSP programs are almost always packaged in Java archive (jar) files. These jar files contain compiled code and resources such curricular materials, images, and data files.

Awards

In 2011, the project received an important award, the Science Prize for Online Resources in Education, or SPORE from Science magazine[1][2] In 2015, the project received the UNESCO King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa Prize for the Use of ICTs in Education and Excellence Award Multimedia Physics Teaching and Learning Conference MPTL20 In 2020, the project received the Excellence in Physics Education Award from the American Physical Society

References
  1. Physorg, Science Magazine Honors Web Site, retrieved 2011-12-05.
  2. Ars Technica, Science Education Prize Goes to Open Source Physics, retrieved 2011-12-05.
Notes
  • M. Belloni, W. Christian, and D. Brown, "Open Source Physics Curricular Material for Quantum Mechanics: Dynamics and Measurement of Quantum Two-state Superpositions," Computing in Science and Engineering 9, 4, 24-31 (2007).
  • W. Christian, Open Source Physics: A User’s Guide with Examples, Addison-Wesley (2006).
  • W. Christian, M. Belloni, and D. Brown, "An Open Source XML Framework for Authoring Curricular Material," Computing in Science and Engineering, September/October (2006).
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