PHY 241 Net Research Project for 3/15/99

Charter Day ... Science in 1962

The Project

This week's Net Research has a different flavor from normal. In honor of Charter Day and UVI's birth 37 years ago, you will examine the state of physics and science technology in the year 1962. The progress of science and technology in the last 37 years is hard to comprehend, even for those of us who were around in 1962. If you'll pardon the reminiscence of an "old" professor, I remember when the first hand-held calculator came onto the market. This beauty could add, subtract, multiply, AND divide. It had a 4 digit red LED display. And it was only $500! The one mainframe computer at my undergraduate college (used for all the programming courses) was the IBM 1138. It occupied about 10 cubic meters of space, had 32k of memory, and you entered your program via a mechanical reader that processed about one punch card per second. The execution time was a hundred times slower and had far less capability in all aspects than today's hand held graphing calculators. And that was in the 1971!

For this week's research effort on the net, you are mostly on your own. Find "the state of things" in 1962 for some topic, device, theory, etc that is related to physics and compose a 250 word or less manuscript describing how it was in 1962. The manuscript should be in your own words, but provide references (preferably URLs) for all sources of information. Of course, you could turn this into a library project, but it is preferred that your information come from the net. Finding a few good URL's to share with the rest of the class would be great. Later, I will compile and edit the entries and put them out on the net as the Physics 241 Class of Spring 1999's contribution to Charter Day.

Subjects

Below is a short list of ideas for your search, but by no means are you restricted to this list. Feel free to explore areas of personal interest.

1. the state of space ... who and what was in outer space?
2. what was the view of our Universe.
3. for who and for what was the Nobel prize in physics awarded?
4. the state of computers or electronic technology.
5. the state of televisions or radios ... the devices, not the lame programming.
6. the state of communications.

For those of you with little experience in independent net research, a few of the standard search engines are:

1. Lycos
2. Yahoo
3. Hotbot

The net search button on the menu bar of your browser will probably give you several other options such as Excite, Infoseek, and AltaVista. If you don't find what you want with one engine, try another. All search engines are not alike!

Each engine will also have a help section to show you how to narrow your search. Many engines will allow you to search in restricted areas such as Education, Business, etc. Essentially all engines adhere to the "+" denotation for searching strings of words. For example, if you want to look for something on televisions in 1962, a simple search for "television" will probably give you far too many hits, most of which will not be useful. By placing a "+" as the first character in a string of words, you can narrow the search considerably. Entering "television +history" would list only those sites in which both the words, television and history, appear in the "meta" description for the site. (Note a space before the + , but no space between the + and the following word.)

Happy surfing!

Be sure to enter your full name. Enter your email address ONLY if you want the number of points awarded e-mailed to you. Responses should be brief but complete. You must click the SUBMIT button to submit your entry. Entries are due by noon on Monday of next week.