Fisica Hoy (Physics Today)
Launch date: November 2004
Client:
The Autonomous University of Madrid is one of the Spanish universities of
greatest international prestige due to the quality of its teaching and research.
In particular, the area of Physical Sciences counts amongst its membership
some of the most distinguished and recognised European physicists of our
time.
Objectives:
During the last few years, a progressive decrease in the matriculation of
degree courses in basic sciences has been observed and, in particular, in
Physics. Although this is a general problem and not specific to the Autonomous
University of Madrid, this institution has decided to take issue with the
matter and begin the task of broadcasting to the public in general, and
to the young in particular, the fascinating world of physics with the ultimate
objective of improving both the number and quality of students enrolled.
For this the following was proposed:
- Carry out a series of interviews with researchers, teachers and students so that they could explain first hand the challenges facing physics today
- Emphasize in professional outlets, both inside and outside the academic arena, what a degree course in Physics offers.
- Introduce a scientific news service which will provide content rotation for the portal
- Create a series of animations which illustrate in a simple format some aspects of modern physics
- Develop a section containing Science problems at high school level that may be of interest to “potential clients”: college and high school students
Technology:
Client programming: the principal tools used on the client side were:
- HTML and CSS for content presentation
- Flash for the front page animations and the problems solved section
Server programming: amongst the developments, those noteworthy are:
- Remote content managers in PHP and MySQL
- Automatic procedures to read RSS files for the scientific news service
Tracking:
The project results have been very positive given that, for the first time
in several years, the number of students registered for Physics degree courses
at the Autonomous University of Madrid has increased, despite the gradual
reduction in the number of students registered overall within the rest of
the universities.
Traffic: 250,000 visits were counted in the 2005, with more than half a million page downloads.
Search engine positioning: the results in this section may be classified
as simply spectacular. We herewith illustrate some of the results obtained
on Google.es and Yahoo.es at the end of 2005.
Google:
| Combinación de palabras clave |
Posición | Resultados |
| física | 2 | 17.100.000 |
| estudios de física | 1 | 4.340.000 |
| física y arte | 1 | 3.070.000 |
| biofísica y medicina | 1 | 215.050 |
| física cerebro | 3 | 688.000 |
| biofísica cerebro | 1 | 12.600 |
| física del espacio |
5 | 2.370.300 |
| física y medioambiente |
2 | 1.650.000 |
| partículas elementales |
8 | 121.300 |
| física partículas elementales |
8 | 85.400 |
| física nanotecnología |
1 | 128.000 |
| fotónica |
1 | 179.000 |
| salidas profesionales |
6 | 1.100.000 |
| salidas profesionales física |
1 | 253.000 |
Yahoo:
| Combinación de palabras clave |
Posición | Resultados |
| física |
1 | 19.600.000 |
| Partículas elementales | 1 | 87.600 |
| Estudios de física | 1 | 3.25.000 |
| fotónica | 1 | 16.100 |
| física cerebro | 1 | 881.000 |
