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Preface

The present work pertains to a University Grants Commission (UGC) sponsored Minor Research Project (MRP) on web-based technological innovations in undergraduate and post-graduate teaching of select topics in solid state physics and quantum mechanics. The aim of the work has been primarily to explore the use of the internet and easily available software resources to design hyper-linked teaching material in a few select topics in the aforementioned subjects. Hyper-linked web-pages provide the great benefit of allowing the student to browse through the teaching material at his own pace, jumping between topics at will and as per his requirement. The internet also provides the teacher innovative ways of complementing his classroom teaching in the form of applets, animations and other multimedia resources. A small but very fruitful effort has been made in this work to that end. The work is however open-ended, the material uploaded on the net is to be updated as per requirement to include new topics, updates and rectifications.

To use this 'E-learning' resource one has to have the following hardware and software:

$ \bullet$ A PC (personal computer) or a Mac with a decent processor and at least 256 MB of RAM, sound card and a 17inch colour monitor with 1024 x 768 resolution.

$ \bullet$ A fast internet connection (at least 128 KBPS speed).

$ \bullet$ Decent speakers to listen to audio.

$ \bullet$ A web browsing software, preferably Internet explorer 6 or above, Mozilla 1.7 or above.

$ \bullet$ Java plugin (Java 2 Standard Edition 1.4.2 or newer) which may be obtained for free from java.sun.com.

In order to browse through the pages one may use the buttons at the top and/or bottom. In some cases the user may land up inside a page containing no links..in such a scenario he is advised to click on the back button inside the browser toolbar to return to the page of origin. In case a particular web page is very long, please do take the trouble of scrolling down the page with the help of your mouse.

Some mistakes, broken links, typos may still be present. One of the java applets seems to be afflicted with a bug. I am working on the problem. I assure you that all these glitches would be taken care of at the earliest. It would be very much appreciated if such aberrations are brought to my notice. I would love to have your feedback and suggestions too. Do email me at abhipod dot gmail dot com.

Happy browsing!!


next up previous
Next: Solid State Physics Up: UGCMinorResearchProject Previous: UGCMinorResearchProject
Abhijit Poddar 2008-01-07