Physics Education
Using 6 years of evaluation data we assess the medium- and long-term impacts upon a diverse range of students, teachers, and schools from participating in a programme of protracted university-mentored projects based in cutting-edge space…
Physics in schools is distinctly different from, and struggles to capture the excitement of, university research-level work. Initiatives where students engage in independent research linked to cutting-edge physics within their school over…
$\textit{Thailand-UK Python+Astronomy Summer School}$ (ThaiPASS), a collaborative project comprising UK and Thai institutions and assess its impact and possible application to schools in the United Kingdom. Since its inception in 2018, the…
Modern mobile phones contain a three-axis microelectromechanical system (MEMS) gyroscope, capable of taking accurate measurements of the angular velocity along the three principal axes of the phone with a sampling rate of 100 Hz or better.…
The partition function for a system of non-interacting $N-$particles can be found by summing over all the states of the system. The classical partition function for an ideal gas differs from Bosonic or Fermionic partition function in the…
This paper explains a unified approach for teaching the electrical model of power transformers to undergraduate students using magnetic circuits. The commonly used approach for explaining the electrical model of power transformers is a…
An introduction to the Quantum Chemistry Package (QCP), implemented in the computer algebra system Maple, is presented. The QCP combines sophisticated electronic structure methods and Maple's easy-to-use graphical interface to enable…
Quantum computing is a growing field at the intersection of physics and computer science. This module introduces three of the key principles that govern how quantum computers work: superposition, quantum measurement, and entanglement. The…
There is a broad literature in multiple-choice test development, both in terms of item-writing guidelines and psychometric functionality as a measurement tool. However, most of the published literature concerns multiple-choice testing in…
Development of outreach skills is critical for researchers when communicating their work to non-expert audiences. However, due to the lack of formal training, researchers are typically unaware of the benefits of outreach training and often…
The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected the education system worldwide that was responding with a sudden shift to distance learning. Various physics courses such as lectures, tutorials, and the laboratories had to be transferred…
Making quantum mechanical equations and concepts come to life through interactive simulation and visualization are commonplace for augmenting learning and teaching. However, graphical visualizations nearly always exhibit a set of hard-coded…
Popular accounts of exciting discoveries often draw students to physics and astronomy, but at the introductory level it is challenging to connect with these in a meaningful way. The use of real astronomical data in the classroom can help…
Most students do not enroll in introductory astronomy as part of their major; for many, it is the last science course they will ever take. Thus, it has great potential to shape students' attitudes toward STEM fields for the rest of their…
The American Physical Society calls on its members to improve the diversity of physics by supporting an inclusive culture that encourages women and Black, Indigenous, and people of color to become physicists. In the current educational…
In this work we study the knowledge acquisition process in a teaching-learning scenario that takes place within the classroom. We explore two complementary approaches, which include classroom observations and student surveys, and the…
The Modeling Instruction (MI) approach to introductory physics manifests significant increases in student conceptual understanding and attitudes toward physics. In light of these findings, we investigated changes in student self-efficacy…
The application of social network analysis (SNA) has recently grown prevalent in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education research. Research on classroom networks has led to greater understandings of student persistence…
We propose a novel application of Social Network Analysis (SNA) using classroom video data as a means of quantitatively and visually exploring the collaborations between students. The context for our study was a summer program that works…
From industry to government to academia, attracting and retaining science, technology, engineering, and mathematics majors is recognized as a key element of the 21$^{\text{st}}$ century knowledge economy. The ability to retain students…