Physics Professor Martin Goldman of the University of Colorado at Boulder won second prize in the Pirelli INTERNETional Award of Italy for his creation of the Physics 2000 Web site.
The award honored the Web site "for its interactive journey through modern physics, which succeeds in making the subject agreeable and understandable to the man on the street, without sacrificing scientific rigor."
Pirelli, an Italian multinational manufacturer of tires and other equipment, launched the annual awards in 1996 to honor the spread of scientific culture through the Internet. Goldman received a free trip to Rome last month to receive the award.
Physics 2000 allows users to conduct more than 65 interactive "virtual experiments" on their computer screens with easy to understand explanations accompanying the interactive experiments. Goldman came up with the idea as a way to change negative attitudes toward physics.
"You can do things with the Web that you can't do with a textbook," he said.
The site is built around topics of general interest, including X-rays, microwave ovens, CAT scans and a new form of matter called Bose-Einstein condensation. Users can play with wave interference patterns, atoms, X-rays, electric force fields, as well as trap and cool atoms to the lowest temperatures in the universe.
The Web site is intended for non-scientists and students of all ages and is free to anyone with Internet access at . The site is best viewed with Netscape version 3.0 or later and a 28.8 modem or faster with at least 16 MB of available RAM.
The virtual experiments were programmed by CU computer expert David Rea and run on Java Applets, a type of computer code that allows users to manipulate virtual objects on the computer screen.
Other CU-Boulder professors assisting with the project include Carl Wieman and Carl Lineberger, both top teachers and researchers at CU-Boulder. Physics 2000 has been sponsored by the Colorado Commission on Higher Education and the National Science Foundation.
The project is in need of new sponsors in order for Physics 2000 administrators to continue to develop new educational units, said Goldman.
Physics 2000 is intended to appeal to today's Web-savvy students and to be a resource for physics teachers and the general public, he said. The science units were created by CU faculty, students, programmers, artists and high school teachers.
Physics 2000 has been endorsed by the American Physical Society -- a national organization of physics researchers -- and by the San Francisco Exploratorium, a hands-on science museum.
First prize in the Pirelli INTERNETional Award went to a movie about how the Internet works from Sweden and third prize went to a Web site on human sexuality from Brazil.