Physics Education
Quantum information science (QIS) is an emerging interdisciplinary field at the intersection of physics, computer science, electrical engineering, and mathematics leveraging the laws of quantum mechanics to circumvent classical limitations…
To stimulate the intellectual curiosity of elementary school students, we conducted a workshop in distance education aimed at exploring the microscopic world inside a cell. In this workshop, elementary school students motivated to learn…
We studied the impact of metacognitive reflections on recently completed work as a way to improve the retention of newly-learned problem-solving techniques. Students video-recorded themselves talking through problems immediately after…
Our first experience of dimension typically comes in the intuitive Euclidean sense: a line is one dimensional, a plane is two-dimensional, and a volume is three-dimensional. However, following the work of Mandelbrot \cite{mandelbrot},…
To date, there is a lack of research on learning environments for pre-service physics teachers that allow them to learn and practise diagnosing students' conceptions that are (currently) not covered in physics education textbooks (e.g.…
Physics can be seen as a conceptual approach to scientific problems, a method for discovery, but teaching this aspect of our discipline can be a challenge. We report on a first-time remote teaching experience for a computational physics…
Commercial electronic measuring devices used in physics usually have high costs. In recent years, thanks to its low cost and the high number of available sensors, the Arduino board has been used for many educational purposes in physics…
Learning miniaturization science remains challenging due to the non-intuitive behavior of microscale objects and complex assembly approaches. Traditional approaches for creating microsystems require expensive equipment, facilities, and…
The dog-and-rabbit chase problem is a classical problem that illustrates the concepts of elementary kinematics and, therefore, can be used in introductory mechanics teaching. By dealing with the relative motion, the problem naturally…
We discussed the criterion for usefully comparing an irreversible cycle with a reversible one, and show that the lost work cannot be determined by the usual cycle diagrams, contrary to what has been found in the literature. To better…
Multiple-choice multiple-response (MCMR) items (i.e., multiple-choice questions for which more than one response may be selected) can be a valuable tool for assessment. Like traditional multiple-choice single-response questions, they are…
Break-in' Point, a 2012 arts and science performance and community engagement research initiative, was presented in the spring and fall semesters at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom at Stage@Leeds. The outcome of a…
We argue that most advances in science and technology during the past and the present centuries rely on modern physics concepts developed in the early $20$th century. The reliance is so profound that any improvement of literacy of science…
An important step in learning to use math in science is learning to see physics equations as not just calculational tools, but as ways of expressing fundamental relationships among physical quantities, of coding conceptual information, and…
Learning to create, use, and evaluate models is a central element of becoming a scientist. In physics, we often begin an analysis of a complex system with highly simplified or toy models. In introductory physics classes, we tend to use them…
Learning to use math in science is a non-trivial task. It involves many different skills (not usually taught in a math class) that help blend physical knowledge with mathematical symbology. One of these is the idea of quantification: that…
Physics has a bad press: it is seen by a majority of people as a boring discipline ever since their High School days. There is no glamour to it, just toil and pain, and for many who engaged in it, the end sight is often unemployment. Could…
We promote the teaching of mass functions as an integral part of an interdisciplinary science education. Mass functions characterize the frequency distributions of objects with different masses on all cosmic scales. We intend to enhance…
Students have several misconceptions about thermodynamics. However, an understanding of basic concepts in this branch of physics remains fundamental to explain thermal phenomena. The purpose of this activity was to extend students'…
A smartphone is a powerful learning aid in the hands of a large section of students around the world. The camera of the phone can be used for several learning purposes apart from its obvious purpose of photographing. If the focal length of…