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Internet Resource Guide For Physics Majors: English 202c
Internet Resource Guide For Physics Majors: English 202c
Table of Contents
Information ...................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
Content ............................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined. Audience/Purpose ............................................ Error! Bookmark not defined. Asumptions ...................................................................................................... 4 Organizations .................................................................................................. 4 Tips for this Guide........................................................................................... 5
For Students.................................................................................... 6
PSU Physics Homepage ............................................................................... 6 Physics Forums............................................................................................... 7
Content
This guide contains resources meant to assist undergraduate physics majors. The content will be both to assist the undergraduate with current work, and provide resources that may help the undergraduate students later in their career. The resources within this guide will provide many different levels of support for the user. Some resources will simply serve as a location where the user can keep up with changes within the world of physics. Some resources will act as reference sources to assist the user with research. Other resources will provide a link for reaching out to the physics community, or with finding jobs within that community. All of the content should provide important information to the user.
Audience/Purpose
This guide is intended for undergraduate physics students currently attending Pennsylvania State University, and intending on pursuing a career related to physics. This guide is useful for both current students attending physics based classes, as well students performing research. This guide will also be useful for any students who are nearing graduation and looking for statistical information on the job market.
Assumptions
This guide was created with the assumption that the reader has a general interest in Physics. Furthermore, it is intended for students of Pennsylvania State University. As such, not all of the information will be useful to those not attending Pennsylvania State University. The user should already have some background knowledge of physics, as most of the resources will contain technical information within.
Organization
This guide is organized into two main sections. The first section is the front matter. The front matter contains the basic information on how to properly use this guide as well a table of contents. The second section is the sources section. This section contains all of the resources available to the user, as well as information on how to properly use each site. The sources section will be further broken down into three subsections. The first contains resources meant to assist Pennsylvania State University students in particular. The second will provided research and reference materials. The final section will provide links to physics communities and information on physics careers.
For Students
PSU Physics Homepage
Location: http://www.phys.psu.edu/ Description: This is your main source of information as an undergraduate at Penn State for students majoring in physics. This web site contains a large amount of information about the physics major at Penn state. It contains information on the courses provided by Penn state, as well as information the faculty, and research being done on campus. This web site also provides access to services and organizations such as tutoring or the Penn State society for physics students. The site can be easily navigated from the tabs on the top of the page. Physics undergraduate majors will find the Undergraduate, Research, and People Tabs of particular use to them. Tips: 1. Use the tabs at the top of the page for easy navigation of the website. 2. This site contains a section in the undergraduate tab for student forms. It contains forms that the students may need, such as applications for concurrent majors or change of Major. 3. A search bar is available to help the user located in the upper right corner of the site.
Physics Forums
Location: http://www.physicsforums.com/ Description: Physics Forums is a website dedicated to providing a place for people to learn and discuss science as it is practiced in the professional scientific community. The site is meant for users ranging from professionals to students, and contains forums to discuss math, physics, astrophysics, and engineering. For the purposes of this guide, the website will mainly act as homework tool for undergraduate students. If you become a user on the site you can post physics questions, to which other users can respond to. This site does a good job of providing help to those questions without blatantly giving away the answers to any homework questions you may post. The site can be navigated from the home page, where the list of forums is posted by topic. The homework and coursework questions forum is the first one visible on the home page. Tips: 1. The site contains a search bar in the upper right hand corner of the site. This can be used to find information without sifting through the forums. 2. Academic and career guidance forums are also available on this site in the science education section.
arXiv.org
Website: www.arXiv.org Description: arXiv.org is an index of over 900,000 e-prints managed by Cornell University. It website contains resources for Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and statistics. The site has a search bar which you can use to find information, or you can browse the site by the topics listed on the home page. The physics resources range from general physics resources to specific fields of physics such as Nuclear or condensed matter physics. The statistics section could also be useful for researching the job market or job earnings. Tips: 1. Searches can be performed by Titles, Authors, Abstracts, Full Text, or Help pages. 2. When browsing a specific subject, the resources can be narrowed down by date. 3. After choosing a general category, the website offers further categories to narrow down the number of resources.