Eureka! Flash Video Player
"Eureka!" is a series of five-minute science cartoons produced in Canada in 1980. The thirty cartoons are organized into six units: Force & Energy, Simple Machines, Heat and Temperature, the Conduction of Heat, the Convection of Heat, and the Radiation of Heat. The authors of this site are streaming these episodes through a Flash video player.
A brief note on copyright. TV Ontario sold digital copies to teachers at one point in time (http://www.tvo.org/sales) but then discontinued sales in order to stream these and other educational videos from http://www.curriculumresourcebank.com. Unfortunately this web site is not currently functional. Proof that Eureka! was being streamed lies in a PDF accessible from TV Ontario's web site (http://www.tvo.org/sales/pdf/productlist_crb.pdf). It is not quite clear that these copies are exempt from copyright law, but should be no problem for teachers to access under educational fair use.
Each cartoon focuses on a key physics topic (such as video 4, acceleration) and relates the topic relates to those previously discussed (such as inertia, mass, speed). The videos are simple, entertaining, and take the edge off the intimidation that physics presents to some students. This resource is a nice introduction to the topic before lecture or after inquiry investigation.
