Computers in Physics Instruction. Proceedings of a Conference (Raleigh, North Carolina, August 1-5, 1988)

Computers are revolutionizing activities in all areas of life. Physics researchers, accustomed to being at the forefront of technology, have been deeply affected by the computer revolution. This effect has serious implications for what is taught and how it is taught in the physics classroom. This conference was organized to allow physics teachers and software developers in physics education to come together and see the state of the art in using computers to teach physics. The conference included 39 invited lectures and 122 contributed presentations. It introduced a number of innovations in the hope of increasing interactions and stimulating future contacts. This document contains the text of the invited and contributed papers organized as follows: (1) "The Computer's Impact on the Physics Curriculum"; (2) "Physics Computer Simulations"; (3) "Computers in the Physics Laboratory"; (4) "Physics Education Research and Computers"; (5) "Computational Physics and Spreadsheets"; (6) "Computer Tutorials in Physics"; (7) "Physics Lecture Demonstrations Using Computers"; (8) "Authoring Tools and Programming Languages"; (9) "Computer Utilities for Teaching Physics"; (10) "Computer Networking Workshops"; (11) "Publishing Physics Software"; and (12) "Videodiscs and Visualization for Physics." Appended are author and general indexes, a list of the contents of distributed software, and a software order form. (CW)