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Physics and Astronomy Resources

• Books and Media
• Articles
• Reference
• Web Sites
• Course Resources
• Writing and Citing

Books and Media

Earlham Libraries Catalog
Catalog of books and other materials available in the Earlham Libraries, with the option to search catalogs in the Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI).

WorldCat
The world's largest library catalog, covering books and other materials available in OCLC member libraries around the globe.

Articles

CiteBaseSearch
Search a large collection of open access fulltext preprints of research articles, primarily in physics. Articles can be sorted according to how frequently they are cited and accessed, both indicators of quality.

Scitation
Provided by the American Institute of Physics, this databases allows you to search the contents of over 100 journals in the fields of physics and engineering. Fulltext is available for those journals to which Earlham subscribes: American Journal of Physics, Physical Review Letters, Reviews of Modern Physics, and The Physics Teacher. You need to register (free) to search; specify that Earlham College is your affiliation.

General Science Abstracts
Indexes periodicals on astronomy, biology, chemistry, earth sciences, math, medicine, and physics, 1983 to present.

Science Citation Index (via Web of Science)
Keyword and citation indexing of major journals across scientific disciplines, 1981 to present. Web of Science also includes Arts & Humanities Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index.

JSTOR
Full text of hundreds of scholarly journals in all disciplines dating back to the 1700s.

Academic Search Premier
Comprehensive index to scholarly journals and general periodicals in all subject and interdisciplinary areas, including full text. Coverage prior to 1990 is sparse.

Reference

Annual Reviews
Full text of annual summaries of scholarship in over three dozen academic disciplines.

Web Sites

Physics and Astronomy Reference
A quick guide to physical constants, astronomy data, unit conversions, and other useful information for physics and astronomy.

Dictionary of Units
Provides a summary of most of the units of measurement in use today, along with the appropriate conversions needed to change them into standard units of the SI system. Includes access to 40 different calculators for automatic conversions, and a printable pocket guide listing the most common conversion units.

The Official string theory Website
Provides basic and advanced information on string theory and its connections with areas of study including cosmology and mathematics.

Physics.org
Provides general information on physics-related topics as well as links to other web sites with useful physics information. Users should register for free to use this site to the fullest.

Einstein light
Presents Einstein's theory of relativity in a clear, easily understood manner and includes related links for further and more in depth exploration.

Physics 2000
Provides interactive modules for understanding key concepts of modern physics.

NOVA: The elegant universe
Web site supporting the book and PBS NOVA program The Elegant Universe, covering the topic of string theory. Contains the full NOVA progarm and additional materials.

Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics
This site provides access to research on mathematics, quantum gravity, astrophysical relativity, and gravitational wave astronomy, including open access review articles and free access to most AEI publications. Max Planck is also known as the Albert Einstein Institute.

Contributions of 20th Century Women to Physics
Contains biographical and bibliographical information for 83 women who made theoretical contributions to physics from 1900 to 1975.

Eric Weisstein's world of physics
Features basic information and references on a large number of topics in physics, including astrophysics, fluid mechanics, modern physics, optics, and thermodynamics.

ArXiv
Searchable access to nearly half a million open access (free full text) e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology and Statistics

Scitopia.org
Serves as an online gateway to the published scholarly research, patents, and government documents of 15 affliated societies in teh fields of physics, mathematics, engineering, and geosciences. Searching of abstracts is free, but a password or payment is required to view articles.

Climate Information/Data:

EdGCM: Climate Modeling for Research and Education
Provides access to a research-quality global climate model (GCM) with a user-friendly interface that runs on desktop computers.

Real Climate
A commentary site (blog) for those interested in climate science run by working climate scientists . It aims to objectively educate, and the discussion is restricted to scientific topics and excludes political or economic implications of the science.

National climatic data center
Historical archives of weather and climate data of all types, including the Storm Events Database and an archive of weather satellite images for nearly every day from July 1, 1992 to present. NOTE: not all data is free; see link on main page for free data.

CLIWOC
Climatological Database for the World's Oceans. Contains daily oceanic climatological data compiled from naval logbooks from 1750-1859 covering the North and South Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans.

Climate Change (U.S. EPA)
Offers the most current and accurate information about climate change issues. Includes sections on science, greenhouse gas emissions, health and environmental effects, U.S. climate policy, what you can do, and other resources.

Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC)
The primary data and information center of the US Department of Energy, CDIAC focuses on global climate change, specifically pertaining to atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other similar acting gases and the emissions and effects of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases worldwide.

Astronomy/Astrophysics:

SIMBAD astronomical database
Provides basic data, cross-identifications, bibliography and measurements for astronomical objects outside the solar system.

Cosmic Evolution
Provides information on the history of the universe, focusing on the seven major epochs.

Journey through the Galaxy
A "mini-net" of information on astronomy and astrophysics.

The Smithsonian/NASA astrophysics data system
Maintains and provides access to three bibliographic databases containing more than 5.6 million records: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Physics, and arXiv e-prints. NOTE: please note that searching is free, but full text access to recent articles requires a subscription to the journal.

AstroWeb
An extensive list of links to astronomy-related information on the Internet.

Wikisky.org
An interactive sky map allowing users to enter photos and comments.

Google Sky
Google version of an interactive sky map.