Physics Education
This article discusses the mindset of an effective mentor. Guidelines are provided for how to be a good mentor.
In the Italian education system, secondary students (ages 14-19) face the foundations of quantum physics during the final term of scientific high school (pre-university year). The Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research…
We present an Open Educational Resource system that instructors can use to assign automatically graded, randomized, and scaffolded assessment questions for astronomy classes.
Introductory mechanics ("physics 1") is a critical gateway course for students desiring to pursue a STEM career. A major challenge with this course is that there is a large spread in the students' incoming physics preparation, and this…
The field of quantum information is becoming more known to the general public. However, effectively demonstrating the concepts underneath quantum science and technology to the general public can be a challenging job. We investigate, extend,…
Even if laboratory practice is essential for all scientific branches of knowledge, it is often neglected at High School, due to lack of time and/or resources. To establish a closer contact between school and experimental sciences, the…
An analysis of institutional data to understand the outcome of the many obstacles faced by students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds is important in order to work towards promoting equity and inclusion for all students. We use 10…
We investigated the epistemological conceptions of the uruguayan Physics teachers and future Physics teachers through the application of the CLASS test (Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey), one of the most accepted instruments…
Researchers often frame quantitative research as objective, but every step in data collection and analysis can bias findings in often unexamined ways. In this investigation, we examined how the process of selecting variables to include in…
A smartphone camera can be used for measuring the width and distance of an object by taking its photograph. The focal length of the camera lens can be determined very accurately by finding the image width of an object on the camera sensor…
This Physics Today article discusses why the physics community needs to embrace the challenge of educating students with diverse educational backgrounds to meet future research and workforce demands and outlines some of the efforts…
The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) is a well-established physics education assessment tool used to evaluate students' comprehension of elementary mechanics principles. While it can be used to analyse the effectiveness of instruction if…
We present a device, created by us and named Stellector, composed by a laser pointer which is precisely guided by two step motors with the purpose to explore and teach astronomy concepts having the real night sky in the background. The…
The milq approach to quantum physics for high schools focuses on the conceptual questions of quantum physics. Students should be given the opportunity to engage with the world view of modern physics. The aim is to achieve a conceptually…
Oscillations and resonance are essential topics in physics that can be explored theoretically and experimentally in the classroom or teaching laboratory environments. However, one of the main challenges concerning the experimental study of…
The classic brachistrochrone problem is standard material in intermediate mechanics. Many variations exist including some accessible to introductory students. While a quantitative solution isn't feasible in introductory classes, qualitative…
What does it mean to "make sense" of physics? It's not a simple question. Most people have an intuitive feeling for when things do (or do not) make sense to them. But, putting this feeling into words--especially actionable words--is another…
The flight of a quadcopter drone, readily available as a toy, is analyzed using simple physics concepts. A smartphone with built-in accelerometer and gyroscope was attached to the drone to register the accelerations and angular velocities…
In the present work we intend to introduce a system based on VR (Virtual Reality) for examining analytical-geometric structures that occur in the study of mathematics and physics concepts in the last high school classes. In our opinion, an…
We illustrate the geometric phase associated with the cyclic dynamics of a classical system of coupled oscillators. We use an analogy between a classical coupled oscillator and a two-state quantum mechanical system to represent the…