Videos
ComPADRE: “The AAPT ComPADRE Digital Library is a network of free online resource collections supporting faculty, students, and teachers in Physics and Astronomy Education.”
Domain of Science: Dominic Walliman explains mainly physics, but also mathematics and other areas of science. His youtube channel is here.
Looking Glass Universe: Mithuna Yoganathan explains the strange world of mathematics and physics. Her youtube channel is here.
Minute Physics: Videos about the universe by Henry Reich. The youtube channel is here.
MIT Physics Demonstrations: Physics demonstrations that are useful for introductory physics courses.
Physics Girl: “Physics Girl is a YouTube Channel created by Dianna Cowern that adventures into the physical sciences with experiments, demonstrations, and cool new discoveries.”
Sixty Symbols: Videos about science by Brady Haran for the University of Nottingham. The youtube channel is here.
Veritasium: “Veritasium is a channel of science and engineering videos featuring experiments, expert interviews, cool demos, and discussions with the public about everything science.” Derek Muller’s youtube channel is here.
Vsauce: “Videos that feed the curious and illuminate the amazing. Vsauce was created by Michael Stevens in the summer of 2010.” One of the youtube channels is here.
Ultimate Collection of Free Physics Videos: A list with links.
Blogs and Web Sites
Ask a Mathematician/Ask a Physicist: A Q/A site with lots of very interesting questions and answers written by mathematical physicist Seth Cottrell and mathematician Spencer Greenberg. Cottrell also has a book out, which includes some of the most popular posts at the blog. Greenberg also has a web site here.
CERN Teacher Programmes: Many resources here.
Flying Circus of Physics, Jearl Walker: “The Flying Circus of Physics is a book about curious events and effects of the everyday world. This site is an extension of the book.”
Physics Stack Exchange: “A site for asking and answering physics questions, for students, teachers, and professionals.”
Physics Overflow: “PhysicsOverflow is an open platform for community peer review and graduate-level Physics discussion.”
Physics Forums: “We aim to provide a community for students, scientists, educators or hobbyists to learn and discuss science as it is currently generally understood and practiced by the professional scientific community. Our main focus is physics, but we also cater to other STEM fields including engineering, chemistry, biology, mathematics, etc. STEM homework help for students is available, as well as academic and career guidance.”
Physics Reimagined: “New ways to popularize or teach physics.”
STEM Directories (UK): “The STEM Directory is a database of providers offering STEM enhancement and enrichment to schools and colleges locally and nationally. Teachers can easily search for shows, workshops, debates, challenges, visiting speakers and more.”
Vaguten: “A quantum of knowledge for gifted and talented students.”
John Baez: A mathematical physicist who is also an excellent teacher and writer. His site contains loads of high-level material, but also lots of material that will be inspirational and informative for keen high-school students.
The Renaissance Mathematicus: History of Science from Thony Christie. Lots of history of astronomy.
Skulls in the Stars: “The author of Skulls in the Stars is a professor of physics, specializing in optical science, at UNC Charlotte. The blog covers topics in physics and optics, the history of science, classic pulp fantasy and horror fiction, and the surprising intersections between these areas.”
Tomasso Dorigo: An experimental physicist who discusses mainly high-energy physics experiments.
Sabine Hossenfelder: A theoretical physicist and science writer who explains physics concepts and also writes about the philosophy and sociology of physics. She writes critically about the current practice of research and how it can be improved.
Jennifer Ouellete: “Jennifer Ouellette is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series.”
Alan Sokal and the Social Text affair.
Peter Woit: A mathematical physicist who is also an excellent teacher and writer. His blog attracts comments from numerous top mathematicians and physicists, and he has written extensively on the failings of string theory.
Astronomy
Introduction to Astronomy, Brock University, Part 1 and Part 2: A full-year course in introductory astronomy, with lots of links to interesting astronomy instructional material, including the beautiful lecture videos and lecture notes of Dr. Bozidar Mitrovic, which can also be found on YouTube here.
Astronomy Picture of the Day: Spectacular photographs, updated daily, hosted by NASA.
Bad Astronomy: Astronomer Phil Plait corrects popular misconceptions about astronomy.
Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Niagara Centre: “Since it was founded in 1890, the RASC has filled a special role in both amateur and professional astronomy.
Today, it has more than 4900 members who share a passion for the night sky and make contributions to astronomy in many ways. The Niagara Centre, which is one of the 29 Centres of the RASC, has been bringing astronomy to the Niagara Region since 1960.”
Starts with a Bang: “The Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it. There’s a cosmic story uniting us. We’re determined to bring it to everyone.” By physicist/astronomer Ethan Siegel.
Universe Today: News about recent astronomical discoveries, updated daily.
Articles and Lecture Notes
arXiv: “arXiv is a free distribution service and an open-access archive for scholarly articles in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics.”
Richard Fitzpatrick: Numerous lecture notes and links to his books, some of which are available for free.
Michael Fowler: Numerous undergraduate lecture notes.
Physics Pages: A university-level site (much of it at graduate-school level) where retired lecturer Glenn Rowe publishes both notes on physics and solutions to physics problems selected from physics text books.
Jakob Schwichtenberg: “I love making sense of something difficult, breaking it down into understandable pieces, and then teaching it to others.” There are lots of expository essays at his site. Also see his No Nonsense Books: Low-cost books written with the needs of readers in mind. You might also like his Physics Travel Guide.
Gerard ‘t Hooft: See also his How to Become a GOOD Theoretical Physicist, full of advice and resources for ambitious students.
David Tong: Lectures on theoretical physics.
Online Courses
MIT Open Courseware: “MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.”
The Theoretical Minimum, Leonard Susskind, Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics: “A number of years ago I became aware of the large number of physics enthusiasts out there who have no venue to learn modern physics and cosmology. Fat advanced textbooks are not suitable to people who have no teacher to ask questions of, and the popular literature does not go deeply enough to satisfy these curious people. So I started a series of courses on modern physics at Stanford University where I am a professor of physics. The courses are specifically aimed at people who know, or once knew, a bit of algebra and calculus, but are more or less beginners.”
Professional Associations
Canadian Association of Physicists:
Ontario Association of Physics Teachers:
American Association of Physics Teachers: Also see The Physics Teacher and the American Journal of Physics.
American Physical Society: Also see Physics Today.
Institute of Physics: Also see Explore Physics, and Physics World.
Science Teachers’ Association of Ontario:
Humour
Are you a scientific crackpot? Are you plagued by one? Check John Baez and/or Warren Siegel to find out, or to seek comfort. You might also consult with Gerard ‘t Hooft.
xkcd: Science-related funny comics. Also check out his “What If?” site, which contains “serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions.”
arXiv vs snarXiv: Humour by David Simmons-Duffin. You try to guess which title is from a real paper posted to arXiv and which title is random nonsense generated by an algorithm.
The Bricklayer’s Lament: If you like British humour listen to this clip (7:40) from a comedy night Gerard Hoffnung did at Oxford University in 1958. It will make you happy that you have studied block-and-pulley problems in introductory physics. If you would like to hear the entire recording, which includes more than just the bricklayer story, you can find it here (26:27).
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