Computers are assuming an increasingly important and pervasive role in physics education. From data gathering to mathematical modeling, from the early grades to graduate school, the computer can be a powerful pedagogical tool.
Much progress has been made in the area of laboratory data gathering, analysis, and depiction, allowing even naive and initially uninterested science students to understand physical processes. Today, students investigate motion using microcomputer-bas ed laboratory (MBL) systems in which sonic rangers and software give real-time graphical output of the graphs of position, velocity, and acceleration versus time. Students explore many different motions in the time it took perviously to explore one. Stu dents learn to "trust" the results of these computer-based systems by the immediate, graphical feedback from moving objects--even the motions of their own bodies.
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