Dust in the Interstellar Medium

The java applets are based on two 'standard' models of interstellar dust found in the astrophysical literature. These models are sufficient to describe and fit to observational data on interstellar extinction.

The applets are successful to produce the 2 micron bump attributed to graphite with reasonable range of column densities and sizes..

The applets behave as expected in extreme cases. For example, size of the grain = 0 will produce optical depth = 0 at all wavelengths.

The layout of the applets are very easy to use. It does assume the user to know about the proper units used in the graph.

The input parameters for the applets are sufficient and do not require other parameters.

Even though the applets lack of formal documentation and only has a basic description of the input parameters, the interface is very intuitive to use.

The applets are appropriate to use in an introductory astronomy course as well as in an upper division astrophysics course. It does require the instructor to develop his/her instructional materials.