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High School + Physics + Linux = ?
earlums25 asks: ""I'm a high school physics teacher stuck in a school where not only is Windows rampant, but the sysadmin isn't interested in alternatives. I want to present a case where my
students could use Linux boxes instead of Windows for the purpose of showing them there are alternatives. The major obstacle is that I haven't found software for Linux that would take the place of 'Precision Timer,' a piece of software that allows students to connect photogates through a Pasco 6500 interface. The software would need to recognize the input signal which comes in through the Pasco interface (a 1/4 inch plug connected the gameport), record time, plot data, print/save data and plots, and do basic calculation of speeds, accelerations, averages and standard deviations. Any ideas?"
Just an additional thought. While my advice is obviously to go with 2), you as a high school teacher have far from infinite time. Work on it one summer with a student or two if you can recruit them and get a basic setup going, and then put it all on the web, and hope that people in colleges and the random freaks out in the woods who know too much and have too much time work on it and expand the number of sensors and logging schemes, etc. That's the only way you will get away with it and keep your sanity; most HS teachers are severely over worked anyway.