Software Development by John Cheeseman &co.

This is both software developed in our lab and links to related programs of interest. Additional software will be added to the list before too too long, I hope.

Photosynthesis is a tutorial program for the Macintosh platform that presents C3 photosynthesis at a level appropriate for first level undergraduates and more advanced high school students. We developed it in response to our own need to present "all" of photosynthesis in less than 6 hours (including lab experiences and discussions) and the sympathetic but not very helpful responses to newsgroup postings asking for ideas. Note: it is intended as supplementary material to strengthen student knowledge, not as a substitute for in-person instruction!

For more information on the Photosynthesis program, read our poster ... presented at the 1995 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Plant Physiologists in Charlotte, NC. You are also welcome to download a demo of the program.

The full length program is available for a basic fee of $25plus $1/student. Please contact us for more information by e-mail (or using the postal address in the poster):

Matej Lexa (m-lexa@uiuc.edu) or John Cheeseman (j-cheeseman@uiuc.edu)

You may also download an experimental Windows demo. We do not have a lot of experience running this software in Windows, therefore we welcome any feedback you may have. The conversion from the original Mac version was kindly done for us by Chris Valentine from KMI - Open University, UK .
The full length program for Windows is available for free now. Download it here. Please, be warned that we were not able to fix all problems with the windows version. It currently misses one image (ignore it) and there are several allignment problems throughout the program. It is simply made available for those who would like to get a better idea of what the Macintosh full-length program looks like or for those who don't have a Mac and don't mind the bugs. After downloading the zip file, unzip it into one directory and run pc-tutor.exe

Other Software and Links:

Check out biology oriented tutorials made by students at Riley High School, including one for photosynthesis.

An interactive simulation of C3 gas exchange (for DOS machines) is also available. This allows simulation of leaf-level studies either for teaching, or for exploring the intricacies of photosynthesis at this level before you do real experiments (or after you have found your results confusing). In any case, Click here to download the program.