Sonoma State University
Department of Physics and Astronomy

Favorite Physics Links

See also Favorite Astronomy Links, Educational Resources in Physics and Astronomy, and Jobs in Physics, Astronomy, and Other Fields.

Guides into the world of physics

• World Year of Physics 2005
• PhysLink — “comprehensive resource tools for physicists and physics students.”
• PhysicsWeb — European site is particularly good for news.
• DC Physics — by Doug Craigen.
• Science: Physics — from Yahoo.
• Physics News Update — an excellent weekly account of new discoveries. You can browse or search through several years' worth of these at this site or at the University of Exeter.
• Physics Central — American Physical Society site presents research, news, and background information at the level of high school physics.
• Physical Review Focus — short, readable explanations, roughly at the level of a first year physics graduate student, of selected research articles from the American Physical Society journals.
• Physics 2000 — An interactive journey through modern physics, presented by the University of Colorado.
• The Net Advance of Physics — gateway to essays, lecture notes, books, and more.
• The Online Journal Publishing Service — view tables of contents and look at all the abstracts, including those from some issues not yet published, for such journals as Physical Review, Applied Physics Letters, Optics Letters, and Chaos. Nonsubscribers can buy individual articles.
• MatterNews — rewritten press releases from universities and others describing recent developments. Lots of ads, but no links to sources.
• American Institute of Physics — includes statistics on salaries, enrollments, degrees, etc.
• Physical Science Resource Center — extensive site from the American Association of Physics Teachers.
• Physics FAQs (Frequently Answered Questions) — and answers
• Physics Mailing Lists and Newsletters
• The Laws List — laws, rules, principles, effects, paradoxes, limits, constants, & experiments.
• A Dictionary of Measures, Units, and Conversions
• How Stuff Works — explanations of the physics of every day life by Marshall Brain.
• University Physics Departments — more than 1600 of them around the world.

Specific fields

• Black Holes and Neutron Stars — virtual trips by Robert Nemiroff.
• Bose-Einstein Condensation — from JILA, where it was demonstrated in 1995.
• Cosmology Books and Links
• Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
• Energy Efficiency web sites
• eFluids — flow engineering, fluid mechanics research, education and directly related topics.
• History of Science — extensive annotated list of websites on history of the physical sciences.
  • History of Physics
  • History of Astronomy
  • A Century of Physics — presented by the American Physical Society (See this exhibit in the SSU Library)
  • The Discovery of the Electron — Celebrating the centennial of this great discovery.
  • Heisenberg and the Uncertainty Principle — from David Cassidy and the AIP Center for History of Physics.
  • J. Robert Oppenheimer Centennial — includes extensive exhibit, at UC Berkeley
  • Transistorized — The history of the invention of the transistor, accompaniment to PBS television series.
• Nanotechnology — by Ralph C. Merkle
• Neuroscience
• Nuclear Fusion: The Science—from ITER.
• Nuclear Topics Links
• Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Table of Isotopes—from LBNL.
• Optical Society of America
• Particle Physics — an introduction provided by Fermilab.
• Photovoltaic Power — from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
• The Soundry — an interactive, and educational web site about sound.
• Spectroscopy Now
• Superconductivity — a guide for teachers.
• Superstrings
  • String Theory: The Official Web Site — basics, cosmology, interviews, and more, by Patricia Schwarz.
  • The Elegant Universe, companion to the Nova television program by Brian Greene.
  • Superstrings — by John Pierre
  • The Second Superstring Revolution — by John H. Schwarz

Closer to home

• Bay Area Physics and Astronomy Colloquia

Other interesting pages

• The Doppler effect — Hear a car pass you at 30 mi/h.
• Fundamental Physical Constants — from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
• How Products Are Made — detailed descriptions of various everyday products and the history of their invention and usage.
• Nanoworld — magnifications up to 20 million, courtesy of Australian chemists.
• Nobel Prizes in Physics
• Physicists on Stamps
• Scholarly Societies: Physics — list compiled at the University of Waterloo Library
• Sport Science — includes the physics of baseball, hockey, rock climbing, etc.