All Vanderbilt students may download Microsoft Office for free.

https://it.vanderbilt.edu/software-store/

Also, install the Data Analysis ToolPak for Excel . This will add several valuable tools to Excel, in particular a histogram function. Notes on using this are available here: Using the Histogram Function.

You also have free access to Mathematica and MATLAB:

Software Distribution and Support | School of Engineering | Vanderbilt University

 

Below are links to websites and freeware that I have found useful in physics education. (No warranty is implied.)

WebSites with Java applets

http://www.falstad.com/mathphysics.html: a wide variety of physics simulations

http://physics.bu.edu/~duffy/semester1/semester1.html: 1st semester simulations

http://physics.bu.edu/~duffy/semester2/semester2.html: 2nd semester simulations

http://homepages.gac.edu/~huber/fourier/: Fourier synthesizer

http://www.ub.edu/javaoptics/index-en.html: optical simulations

http://www.phys.hawaii.edu/~teb/java/ntnujava/Lens/lens_e.html: elegant, simple raytracing simulator

 

Freeware

MagicPlot Student: easy to use curve fitting/data plotting software

gnuplot: a powerful mathematics analysis and plotting program

Microsoft Mathematics: a pc calculator, function plotter

SpectrumLab: audio Fourier analysis software

EMANIM: demonstrates the wave nature of linear and circular polarization

Audacity: audio recording and editing software

Tracker: video motion analysis

Stellarium: a virtual planetarium

Fiji: a distribution of ImageJ ( a freeware image processing and analysis program designed for bio-sciences.) which includes many plug-ins not found in the basic distribution