Interactive PDF Documents

The World Wide Web is now a firmly established feature of modern life. It was first constructed by a physicist, Tim Berners-Lee, at CERN, in Geneva, for the rapid, world-wide exchange of scientific information, but subsequent developments have meant that it has matured into a highly flexible instrument which is universally available, and very easy to access. The potential uses for this communications vehicle are almost unlimited and, as more and more people gain access to it, so its potential as a teaching tool becomes more attractive. The marriage between the skills of the physics community, who were the originators of the World Wide Web, and the capacity of modern computer networks, would appear to make the web a natural medium for mathematics. However, HTML, which is the language of the web, is not ideally suited to mathematical formulae and loading new pages can also be very slow and frustrating. The challenge is then how best to use the web and its potential to help support the learning of mathematics and related technical material....