Physics Education
The Wheatstone bridge experiment is fundamental for precise measurement of electrical resistance, holding significant value in both undergraduate physics education and real-life scientific research. This study reimagines the experiment by…
In the rapidly expanding field of quantum computing, one key aspect to maintain ongoing progress is ensuring that early career scientists interested in the field get appropriate guidance and opportunity to advance their work, and in return…
Rotating saddle potentials provide a compelling visual demonstration of dynamic stability, widely used in undergraduate physics as mechanical analogs to the RF Paul trap. Traditional demonstrations typically rely on rolling ball bearings,…
This paper outlines a deceptively complex problem in classical mechanics which the paper names the "Falling Astronaut Problem," and it explores a method for teachers to implement this problem in an undergraduate classroom. The paper…
The past decade has seen unprecedented growth in active matter and autonomous biomaterials research, yielding diverse classes of materials that promise revolutionary applications such as self-healing infrastructure and self-sensing tissue…
In recent years, the frequency of extreme weather events on Earth has increased significantly. This phenomenon is driven by the intensification of the greenhouse effect caused by anthropogenic activities, leading to temperature variations…
Over the last five years, the McGill University Office of Science Education (OSE) has partnered with faculty members from the Department of Physics to form an education research group with the aim of charting the progression of student…
How the general public perceives scientists has been of interest to science educators for decades. While there can be many factors of it, the impact of recent generative artificial intelligence (AI) models is noteworthy, as these are…
We describe a study focusing on students' and faculty members' reasoning about problems of differing cognitive complexity related to the double-slit experiment (DSE) with single particles. In the first phase of the study, students in…
One hallmark of expertise in physics is the ability to translate between different representations of knowledge and use the representations that make the problem-solving process easier. In quantum mechanics, students learn about several…
This work frames the first three publications around the development of the Flight Physics Concept Inventory (FliP-CoIn), and elaborates on many aspects in more detail. FliP-CoIn is a multiple-choice conceptual assessment instrument for…
The 2024 Quantum Computing, Math and Physics Camp (QCaMP) for Students was a 4-week long summer camp aimed at introducing high school students to quantum concepts and careers, including applications spanning quantum computing, sensing, and…
Quantitative reasoning is an essential learning objective of physics instruction. The Physics Inventory for Quantitative Literacy (PIQL) is an assessment tool that has been developed for calculus-based physics courses to help instructors…
This study introduces an experimental teaching method that employs optic fiber interferometry (OFI) to investigate forced vibration phenomena. It is designed for undergraduate physics majors with foundational mechanics and optics training…
Community-based professional development initiatives have been shown to support physics faculty in their adoption of research-based instructional strategies. Hoping to better understand these initiatives' mechanisms of success, we analyze…
At Arizona State University we have built the first and only fully online Bachelor of Science degree in Physics, with a complete curriculum, including labs. The upper division Advanced Lab courses present a special challenge for online…
We propose a novel clustering pipeline that combines two classic clustering algorithms to better understand student problem-solving strategies. This unsupervised machine learning method helps uncover patterns in reasoning without…
We introduce and theoretically justify a new measure of the self-recognition component of student physics identity called Self-Evaluated Expertise (SEE). This measure is constructed such that it can be extracted from existing responses to…
In this article we present and discuss a didactic activity that combines epistemic aspects of the nature of science (NOS) and a simple, relatively low-cost experiment on electromagnetic induction. The aim of the activity is for students to…
As quantum technologies transition from the research laboratory into commercial development, the opportunities for students to begin their careers in this new quantum industry are increasing. With these new career pathways, more and more…