PHYSICS EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY FACILITY

The Education Technology Facility for the Department of Physics at North Carolina State University is an active, diverse facility capable of responding to most of the needs of the department as well as outreach programs of the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. In addition, this facility has a reputation for innovation and knowledge in the area of lecture demonstrations. The purpose of this facility is to develop, prepare, set up and repair physics demonstration and audio/visual equipment for the Physics Department here at NCSU.

The demonstration facility is capable of providing demonstrations for two lecture halls and three classrooms in Cox as well as two large lecture halls in adjacent Dabney. Equipment is also made available to professors teaching physics classes in other buildings. Each room in Cox is equipped with an overhead projector and mounted screen. The large lecture halls also have a large screen for movies. Each room has a wide chalkboard with the exception of Cox 204 which is equipped with a large white board. All university classrooms are now furnished with chalk, erasers and markers each day by housekeeping. A limited number of these supplies are kept on hand in the demonstration room and are available if a classroom runs out of supplies through the day.

The demonstration room houses the equipment for over 500 ready made demonstrations and the equipment to assemble countless more. Over 600 demonstrations are available on videodisc for use in the classroom or as a reference. The demonstration room maintains an ever growing collection of 65 laserdisc, 64 video tapes, 109 film loops and 33 16mm films and a large collection of astronomy slides. Overhead transparencies are stored in the demonstration room for all current introductory level textbooks used by the department. The following equipment is available for class use: Power Macintosh G3, Dell 233 Notebook, Epson ELP-3000 computer/video projector, Two NEC computer/video projectors, 46 inch television, 25 inch television, VCR's, laserdisc players, video camera, slide projectors, 16 mm movie projector, and film loop projectors. The demonstration room provides 100-120 demonstrations per week for the department. The majority of these demonstrations are provided for introductory level courses, but demonstrations are also provided for upper level and graduate level courses.

All demonstrations, computer software, videos and orders are cataloged in an extensive MySQL database. This catalog includes a description, a photograph and set up instructions for every demonstration. Many demonstrations now have a QuickTime video and a list of references available. Demonstration usage is cataloged each semester to monitor trends and insure the upkeep of demonstrations. Professor usage reports are prepared each semester and mailed to the respective professor for their personal use. These records are also kept on file in the demo room to assist in the scheduling of student assistants around heavy demo users.

Reference materials on demonstrations are available in the demonstration room for viewing. A reasonable collection of current catalogs, textbooks and demonstration manuals are maintained.

A catalog of demonstrations is published annually, or as needed by the faculty. A separate catalog is produced for each textbook that gives demo suggestions for each chapter and section of that text. A complete catalog is made available upon request. The staff of the Demonstration Room is available for discussion and training on any of the demonstrations, or for assistance in customizing a demonstration to the needs of a particular class.

Several times a year the Demo Room News is published. This gives hours of operation of the Demonstration Room and announces new demonstrations and equipment.

The Lecture Demonstration Facility conducts approximately 8 demonstration shows per year to local and visiting schools. The two largest shows are Isaac & Albert's Excellent Adventure , a public show in the spring, and NCSU Open House for prospective students in the fall.