The general physics experiment teaching instruments at the Department of Physics of National Taiwan University came from the early stage the hand-made props in the time of Taipei Imperial University and the US Aid experimental apparatus were used to the stage where the teaching instruments were self-designed, improved, and innovated. The evolution represents a historical significance of experiment teaching in the basic science of physics in Taiwan. The experiment teaching of general physics in National Taiwan University has had its outstanding tradition and built its unique characteristics of education in inspiring students. It affects very broadly and deeply and is greatly credited with the nurturing and rooting of personnel devoted to physics and engineering sciences.The theme of the program: “Basic Physics Experiment Digital Archives” adopts the instrumental entities and cultural resources for the experiment teaching of general physics from the Department of Physics of National Taiwan University as the major collections. The objectives are to preserve and to restore the experimental instruments and contents of early Taiwan general physics experiment teaching, refreshing the exquisite hand-made instruments in a long period covered with dust and making them roll again. In a sense that the new generation of physics people are able to get a glimpse of their predecessors who in the early age calculated the experimental contents by hand and created the contents from scratch, set up the early text books of general physics printed with original languages, and made the common notes. Besides management and digitization of the old instruments of general physics as well as the values in the collections of many unique home-made instruments, the program has more to do with comparative analysis with modern and current experiments. Young students can explore the change and progress of Taiwan physics education for the past ten years. Meanwhile, it not only promotes observational learning with real objects beyond the text books for the classroom, but also inspires creativity in retrospect of old ideas and triggers new senses.

The General Physics Laboratory of the Department of Physics in National Taiwan University has been conducting works for years little by little such as management of the collections, inquiry of inventory, restoration, and trial of digitization. The Laboratory continued to complete about half of the works in the semester year of 2008, works of digitization trials by inquiry and editing upon documents, manuscripts, and data, works of archiving, restoring and managing the collections of precious instruments related to general physics in a part (with assistance from senior retired technicians and personnel of a metal factory), and works of video shooting of relevant experiments. In order to present a complete picture of evolution and development of Taiwan’s modern physics and to avoid memory interruptions due to day by day aging of the retired teachers and experienced technicians, the works for digitization were considered pressing and necessary. The program has been included in the integrated organizational planning of “National Taiwan University Deepening Taiwan Research Core Archives Digitization” since the semester year of 2009 to systematically integrate and digitize related documents as well as materials in the history of Taiwan’s modern physics and to construct columns for aftermath data, data library, and websites, anticipating to present in the future Taiwan’s history of the evolution of physics to the public through the outcome of the digitization.

This program would like to present a wealth of digital resources and detailed history of the development of general physics experiments to the students and the general public for reference and application. Therefore, in the semester year of 2008 the Laboratory conducted trials in management and digitization of collections, pre-qualification of data and manuscripts in the general physics experiment teaching reform for the past years, inquiry into inventory of home-made instruments related to general physics and demonstration materials of experiment teaching for the early years, as well as works in physical restoration and preservation. Moreover, since 2009 the Laboratory has been respectively implementing digitization and management at the recovery of apparatus, making films of experiment operation, digitizing historical photographs and relevant documents and files, editing oral contents of visited characters, categorizing and trimming video clips, and proceeding works as such. The above efforts are expected to continue in the semester year of 2010 to enrich digitized resources of the program. Furthermore, in the semester year of 2010 the Laboratory will establish a specification for inquiry and right of access to the inventory. It will respectively construct properties of access rights per outcome of the digitization during the semester years of 2008 and 2009, selecting authorization policies based on the right of ownership. Not only will the general public be allowed to search and browse relevant information on the website for the data library of the general physics experiments digitized archives, but also the graduate students and professors will be able to use the precious resources for research and teaching activities through legal authorization policies. This program is not limited to digitizing archives of existing heritage, but meanwhile, it is also a conduction of works for historical manifestation. What had happened was history. The facts of past are step by step deduced with historical records and relics, etc. Research of history must be built upon historical materials.