Physics Education
We report several simulation programs which can be used to teach the statistical foundation of thermal physics in the introductory college physics courses. These programs are simple applications of a technique of generating random…
This paper is a lab tutorial (and a theory primer) for the integral quantum Hall effect experiment as conducted at Applied Solid State Physics, University of Bochum, Germany.
We introduce and solve in closed form a simple model of a macroscopic body propagating in a one-dimensional resistive medium at temperature T. The assumption of completely inelastic collisions between the body and the particles composing…
Lessons and homework problems involving a pendulum are often a big part of introductory physics classes and laboratory courses from high school to undergraduate levels. Although laboratory equipment for pendulum experiments is commercially…
We report on a determination of the Earth-Moon distance performed by students of an Italian high school, based on measurements of the time delay of the "echo" in the radio communications between Nasa mission control in Houston and the…
This paper describes low-cost techniques used to collect video data in two different tutorial classrooms - one in which the recording equipment is permanently installed and one in which it is temporary. The author explains what to do…
Since cheating is obviously wrong, arguments against it (it provides an unfair advantage, it hinders learning) need only be mentioned in passing. But the argument of unfair advantage absurdly takes education to be essentially a race of all…
The paper describes two general problems encountered in computational assignments at the introductory level. First, novice students often treat computer code as almost magic incantations, and like novices in many fields, have trouble…
The present tutorial aims at covering the fundamentals of electromagnetism, in a condensed and clear manner. Some solved and proposed exercises have been included. The reader is assumed to have knowledge of basic electricity, partial…
In Mexico, the educative reform that has been taking effect gradually in the secondary school education from 2005, has eliminated some subjects and created other that they concentrate in a single degree of studies the themes of the basic…
An experiment investigating the angle of Cerenkov light emitted by 3-MeV electrons traversing an acrylic detector has been developed for use in the advanced physics laboratory course at the University of Rochester. In addition to exploring…
The discovery of atomic nucleus by E. Rutherford, at the beginning of the twentieth century, was the Nuclear Physics original landmark. From then, a series of experiments in which beams of particles composed of neutrons, protons and others,…
The Circle of Apollonius is named after the ancient geometrician Apollonius of Perga. This beautiful geometric construct can be helpful when solving some general problems of mathematical physics, optics and electricity. Here we discuss its…
The Physics First movement - teaching a true physics course to ninth grade students - is gaining popularity in high schools. There are several different rhetorical arguments for and against this movement, and it is quite controversial in…
If Kermit's What-Happens-Next-Machine had functioned, you would not have seen much, because it would have gone too quickly. In this article it is shown that putting up and solving the equations of motion of a seemingly simple mechanical…
The amount of published research in Physics Education Research (PER) shows, on one hand, an increasing interest in the design and development of high performance physics teaching strategies, and, on the other hand, it tries to understand…
We present evidence from three student interactions in which two types of common solution methods for solving simple first-order differential equations are used. We describe these using the language of resources, considering epistemic games…
Test takers do not give equally reliable responses. They take different responding strategies and they do not make the same effort to solve the problem and answer the question correctly. The consequences of differential test takers'…
The main task of an introductory laboratory course is to foster students' manual, conceptual and statistical ability to investigate physical phenomena. Needing very simple apparatus, pendulum experiments are an ideal starting point in our…
This article describes measurement of potato cannon velocity with a digitized microphone signal. A microphone is attached to the potato cannon muzzle and a potato is fired at an aluminum target about 10 m away. The potato's flight time can…