Call Me Curious or How I Found Tracker Video Program

So often I find that in my path for knowledge it takes many directions and I learn more than I had expected to.  I was checking out the Google Book Search function and I found that there was a book that listed my website as a resource, "Fun Physics Projects for Tomorrow's Rocket Scienctist.". Naturally I ordered the book to see what it was all about. 

The book goes through many projects a couple of which I have on my website; water rockets and mousetrap cars. Detailed instructions are given how to construct the projects but also there are physics lessons to be tried with the projects.

Sample Screen Shot from Tracker

What really caught my eye was the use of a free program known as "Tracker". With this program you can load in video files and then analyze the movement of objects that are in the video frame by frame. I have just barely scratched the surface of what this program can do but it appears there is much that can be done. 

Sample Screen Shots from Sample Files in Tracker

Watch for more reports on Tracker in the future, download it here.   http://www.opensourcephysics.org/webdocs/Tools.cfm?t=Tracker

Bill Kuhl
http://www.scienceguy.org