Erik: This page looks very cool! I tried playing with a few of the animations, and it was fun. Just one thing to think about, though. In order to understand your explanations, you already have to know calculus, which won't help the high school student who doesn't yet know calculus. I think that the problem with asking about tides & other things in this thread was also a question about how simple/intuitive an explanation is possible. On another subject -- I'm wondering what would have happened to physics had gravity _not_ produced conic sections for orbits. Since mathematicians of these early times had only studied conic sections, they weren't ready to "see" anything else. As an analogy, the discovery of "smooth" calculus blinded mathematicians and physicists for the next several hundred years to the possibilities of non-smooth thingy's such as fractals. At 04:24 PM 5/10/03 -0700, Erik Neumann wrote:

...

The computer & internet have the capability to go far beyond the library in its ability to engage & challenge children. I just wish that Feynmann had the internet at his disposal when he did his famous lectures. Perhaps someone of Feynmann's caliber is (or soon will be) working on a similar project.

I'm not of Feynmann's caliber, but I'm trying to work in this area... if you have an opportunity to take a look at my website, http://www.myphysicslab.com, and give me some feedback on possible improvements I'd be very grateful.

Regards,

Erik Neumann erikn@MyPhysicsLab.com http://www.myphysicslab.com