I quite enjoy many of the
exhibits in Second Life. There are
several planetariums, the Exploratorium, and public lectures. If you are a resident of Second Life, IM me inworld.
There are some very slick
physics applets (physlets) available on the
web. These are simulations that often are interactive; you usually can
change one or more of the relevant parameters. I have two favorite sites
that have a bunch of simulations in one place.
One is http://www.explorelearning.com/. The applets at the explorelearning
site are called “gizmos”. You can browse
them by grade or discipline. The other
site is http://phet.colorado.edu/new/index.php
. It is a project of the Physics Education Technology program at the University
of Colorado. Go to the “play with sims” page; you’ll find them organized by physics topic.
Here's another favorite page. This one
opens with a "powers of ten" demo, but I like it even more for the
photo gallery. There are hundreds of photomicrographs of everything from soap
bubbles to frozen alcholic beverages. The
interference patterns are awesome. I downloaded my screensaver from this
site. I'd show you some pictures, but the site has a whole page devoted
to a copyright warning. Check out the "molecular
expressions" web page.
Were it not for the dire copyright
warnings in the link above, the background of this web page would be an
interference pattern from a soap bubble. Instead, it should be a picture
of the nebula M17 (also known as the Omega or Swan nebula) taken by the Hubble
Space Telescope. I lifted it from the public (which means
that stealing is legal) pages of the Hubble web
site. I found it in the archives of the newscenter. Whether or not you see it probably depends on
the browser you’re using.
For astronomy buffs, there's always the Astronomy Picture of the
Day. It changes everyday, but you can also
search the archives or browse through a chronological list.
That's all I can think of
today.