Plotting data sets may not be the most exciting task facing students, but it is one of the most fundamental and necessary functions in the study of physics. The assignment is made easier with Physics Plot, a sophisticated Windows-based plotting package that takes teh tedium out of the job. This robust program offers autoscaling, least square fitting, data manipulation, and function plotting in an exceptionally simple interface. Data can be entered by hand, generated by built-in functions, or imported electronically from a data file or another application.
Physics Plot supports up to four independant x-y graphs on the screen. Graphs have scales, titles, labels, properties, and up to 12 data sets. These sets can be plotted as points, points with error bars, or on a curve. Scales can be determined automatically or manually, and log scales can be turned on or off. Both graphs and data values can be printed, and all graph data, components, and properties can be saved for later use and evaluation.
Physics Plot includes a context-sensitive help system, an index, and a series fo tutorials with quick graphs to familarize users with program capabilities. There is also a set of demonstrations using sample graphs that show how Physics Plot works. Explorations include analysis of data from a smart pulley, levels of magnification of data from a neural analyzer, data from a pulse height analyzer, and data from the built-in polynomial function. 43 pp.
