Flash-card programs, eBook reading software, and science and math simulations are among more than a dozen educational software programs developed for Apple's iPhone that appear in the new App Store, which debuted July 11.

Educators and students can use these applications to locate stars and constellations, visualize a hydrogen atom, learn a new language, and read books on their iPhone, among other uses.

As of press time, 16 of the 500-plus applications available through the App Store were educational in nature, and most of these were flash-card programs. iPhone users can download the applications--which range in price from $39.99 to free of charge--by accessing the App Store through Apple's iTunes software and clicking on the "education" category.

Modality Inc., a company that transforms content from reference books to mobile applications, has provided iPhone users with Netter's Neuroscience Flash Cards and Netter's Anatomy Flash Cards. Both sets of cards are based on Netter's Atlases and feature a study mode and a quiz mode, where the user can test his or her progress. Each Netter's application costs $39.99.

AccelaStudy has released five language flash-card programs, costing $14.99 each, with more to come. Applications for French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Turkish are already offered on the site, with Portuguese, Russian, and Polish to come soon, the company says. Each language program features a database of more than 1,200 words in 41 subject areas, with a searchable dictionary and a quiz function.

For $11.99, iPhone owners can download Starmap, a "pocket planetarium" that helps users easily find constellations, planets, or shooting-star zones. The program also reportedly can help stargazers locate 120,000 visible stars. The application is available in English, Dutch, Japanese, French, Spanish, Italian, and German.

Flash My Brain Flashcards and StudyCards, both costing $9.99, allow users to create their own flash cards. Users of Flash My Brain Flashcards can take photos or add songs to their cards and share them through the application's online library, which already has more than 100,000 user-made flash cards to choose from.

Like Flash My Brain, the StudyCards application also allows users to share the cards they create or download from the web site, but StudyCards comes with 1,000 pre-installed cards as well. StudyCards also supports more than 650 languages.

Lexicon, which can be downloaded for $9.99, is an animated flash-card application designed to help users quickly learn more than 70 languages. Users can quiz themselves and record and play back audio on their iPhone to hear how they're progressing with the language.

The BookShelf application allows users to download and read eBooks on their iPhone. The application, which costs $9.99, allows users to set an auto-scroll feature that enables them to read "hands-free."

The "Atom in a Box" application is a tool to help users visualize the hydrogenic atomic orbitals, showing what the hydrogen atom looks like in three dimensions. For $9.99, users are able to explore all aspects of the atom through animation and mathematical description.