Mastering concepts made easy

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The Wolfram Demon-strations Project is an expanding collection of freely available, interactive videos in math, science and many other areas at all levels — from elementary education to front-line research.

The brainchild of Stephen Wolfram, the project facilitates computational exploration to the widest possible audience, all over the globe. With the help of visuals, each graphic is supplemented with information on a particular topic. The Wolfram Demonstrations Project website attracts educators, students and researchers who wish to present their ideas to the world. The Demonstrations follow an open-source model. Which means that they not only demonstrate a concept, but also tell the viewer how to use it. They are presented at http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/index.html and are categorised under:

*Mathematics
*Computation
*Physical Sciences
*Life Sciences
*Business & Social Systems
*Systems
*Models & Methods
*Engineering & Technology
*Creative Arts
*Our World
*Kids & Fun
*Mathematica Functionality

During its launch, The Wolfram Demonstrations Project contained only 1,300 demonstrations but it presently has close to 5,900. Its growing collection of interactive illustrations is created by Mathematica users from around the world, who participate by contributing. The demonstrations cover a variety of levels, from elementary school mathematics to much more advanced topics, including quantum mechanics and models of biological organisms. Among the latest demonstrations uploaded are:

*2D Fourier Transforms
*Optical Model of the Human Eye
*Effect of Extra Payments on an Amortising Loan
*Anomalies for Planetary Motion
*Colorising an Image
*Saltwater Puzzle
*Reconstruction of the Great Wall
*Lung Model Simulation
*Fundamental Theorem of Calculus
*Bernoulli’s Theorem
*Mirage

To understand a concept, the viewer can move the controls available to effect a change in the output. The user-controlled animation simplifies some of the more complex features of many areas of mathematics and graphics. The direct-user interface converts these commands into actions such as moving a slider, clicking a button or dragging a piece of graphic.

Each Demonstration also carries a brief description about the concept being shown. All Demonstrations, and their code, are provided free of charge and run on any computer with Mathematica or the free Mathematica Player.

A Demonstration has to be downloaded to control it as the web page is designed to display only a flash preview. To download a Demonstration to your desktop, just click the orange “Download Live Version” button above any Demonstration’s web preview. After downloading you can run it using the free Mathematica Player, or Mathematica (Ver-sion 6 or higher). All Demonstr-ations run freely on any standard Windows, Mac, Unix, or Linux computer.

Actually, there is no need  for Mathematica  as  anyone can preview a Demonstration on line, and interact with it using the free Mathematica Player. However, if Mathematica is installed we can also exper-iment with and modify the code on our own computers.
There is a review process for Demonstrations before they are uploaded. The content of each Demonstration is rigorously reviewed by experts in the relevant fields and automated software-quality-assurance methods are used to check its operation. More details about individual participation is available at www.demon-strations.wolfram.com/FAQ.html, and www.demonstrations.-wolfram.com/participate.html. You can also follow the latest uploads of Demonstrations on its Face-book page at http://ja-jp.facebook.com/pages/The-Wolfram-Demonstrations-Project/138488652847536.

Creators of the Wolfram Demonstrations Project wish to develop science, technology and tools to make computation an ever-more-potent force in today’s world.

The research firm has developed mathematica soft-ware for engineers, financial analysts, researchers, and students. Founded by Stephen Wolfram in 1987, the company released its first Mathematica suite in 1988.

The company also offers webMathematica for doing interactive calculations through a Web browser, and gridMat-hematica for running the Mathematica software on computer clusters.

Wolfram Research sponsors the world’s largest free network of technical information websites, including MathWor-ld, the No.1 site devoted to mathematics, on the web.