Physics Education
A variety of activities are commonly used in college physics courses including lab, tutorials, and studio curricula. Instructors must choose among using research-based activities, designing their own activities or modifying existing…
The Schwarzschild metric is derived in a manner that does not require familiarity with the formalism of differential geometry beyond the ability to interpret a general spacetime metric. As such, the derivation is suitable for an…
We present an investigation into the interdisciplinary role of physics in a physics-for-non-physicists course at Pomona College. This work is guided by prior research into introductory physics for life-science (IPLS) courses, but attends to…
Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in using Virtual Reality (VR) technology to benefit instruction, especially in physics and related subjects. As VR devices improve and become more widely available, there remains a number of…
One of the biggest revelations of 20th century physics, is virtually unheard of outside the inner circles of particle physics. This is the gauge theory, the foundation for how all physical interactions are described and a guiding principle…
In Ojibwe the Morning Star is called Ikew Anung, which means the Womens Star. In Lakota the same planet Venus is called Anpetu Luta, the Red Day Star. Bother cultures have rich and interesting understandings of Venus that relate to other…
Cultural Astronomy is interdisciplinary connecting the arts, humanities, social & physical sciences. Data collection methods and theories are used from many disciplines and meld with methods and theories within cultural astronomy. The…
Studies on physics identity have shown that it is one of the main factors that can predict a person's persistence in the field; therefore, studying physics identity is critical to increase diversity within the field of physics and to…
In deciding on a student's grade in a class, an instructor generally needs to combine many individual grading judgments into one overall judgment. Two relatively common numerical scales used to specify individual grades are the 4-point…
We explore the idea of integrating machine learning (ML) with high performance computing (HPC)-driven simulations to address challenges in using simulations to teach computational science and engineering courses. We demonstrate that a ML…
Group theory is used in many textbooks of contemporary physics. However, electromagnetic community often considers group theory as an "exotic" tool. Graduate and postgraduate textbooks on electromagnetics and electrodynamics usually do not…
We consider the issue of validating the relationship between electric fields and optical intensity as proposed by the classical theory of electromagnetism. We describe an interference scenario in which this can be checked using only…
Primary and secondary education is a crucial stage to build a strong foundation before diving deep into specialised subjects in colleges and universities. To excel in the current education system, students are required to have a deep…
In the world of building acoustics, a standard tapping machine has long existed for the purpose of replicating and regulating impact noise. However there still exist other kinds of structure-borne noise which could benefit from being…
Recent releases of open-source research codes and solvers for numerically solving partial differential equations in Python present a great opportunity for educators to integrate these codes into the classroom in a variety of ways. The ease…
Einstein's theory of general relativity (GR) provides the best available description of gravity. The recent detection of gravitational waves and the first picture of a black hole have provided spectacular confirmations of GR, as well as…
A java-based graphical tool for drawing Feynman diagrams is presented. It differs from similar existing tools in various respects. For example, it is based on models, consisting of particles (lines) and (optionally) vertices, each of which…
We present pygiftgenerator, a python module for systematically preparing a large number of numerical and multiple-choice questions for Moodle-based quizzes oriented to students' formative evaluation. The use of the module is illustrated by…
Teaching cosmology at the undergraduate or high school level requires simplifications and analogies, and inevitably brings the teacher into contact with at least one of the pedagogical interpretations of the expanding universe. The by far…
In D(L)akota star knowledge, the Sun is known as Wi and the Moon is Han-Wi. They have an important relationship, husband and wife. The pattern of their ever-changing relationship is mirrored in the motions of Sun and Moon as seen from our…