Java programming and Internet technologies for undergraduate education Original Research Article

Although it is somewhat of a cliché that computers are revolutionizing education, it is still not common to find computer-based interactive curricular material. Internet technologies are likely to change this situation by providing standards based on virtual machines and meta-languages. Adopting these technologies may improve the teaching of the underlying physics. This paper describes a set of Java applets, known as Physlets, that make use of these technologies. Physlets are designed to communicate with browsers by employing a scripting language such as JavaScript, thereby allowing one applet to be used in many different contexts.