The Wolfram Demonstrations Project

This was released to public today:

Conceived by Mathematica creator and scientist Stephen Wolfram as a way to bring computational exploration to the widest possible audience, The Wolfram Demonstrations Project is an open-code resource that uses dynamic computation to illuminate concepts in science, technology, mathematics, art, finance, and a remarkable range of other fields.

Its daily-growing collection of interactive illustrations is created by Mathematica users from around the world, who participate by contributing innovative Demonstrations.

Interactive computational resources have typically been scattered across the web--requiring specialized programming knowledge that's made them difficult and expensive to develop. As a result, their coverage has long been limited, and progress has been slow.

In many ways, The Wolfram Demonstrations Project introduces a new paradigm for exploring ideas. The power to easily create interactive visualizations, once in the domain of computing experts alone, is now in the hands of every Mathematica user.

Demonstrations can be created with just a few short lines of readable code, powered by the revolutionary advances in Mathematica. This opens the door for researchers, educators, students, and professionals at any level to create their own sophisticated mini-applications and publish them online.

From elementary education to front-line research, topics span an ever-growing array of categories. Some Demonstrations can be used to enliven a classroom or visualize tough concepts, while others shed new light on cutting-edge ideas relevant to high-level workgroups and thesis research. Each is reviewed for content, clarity, and presentation, edited by experts at Wolfram Research to ensure quality and reliability.

All Demonstrations run freely on any standard Windows, Mac, Unix, or Linux computer. In fact, you don't even need Mathematica to benefit. Anyone can preview a Demonstration online, and interact with it using the free Mathematica Player. Those with Mathematica can also experiment with and modify the code on their own computers.

I looked around a little bit and, although there is nothing related to my own field, I found lots of cool stuff, from maps to oscillations to the Long Tail. Give it a try. Play with some of the demonstrations. See if they are useful for you in your teaching.