Related papers: Interpreting Recoil For Undergraduate Students
This tutorial provides an intuitive and concrete description of the phenomena of electromagnetic nonreciprocity that will be useful for readers with engineering or physics backgrounds. The notion of time reversal and its different…
We describe a physics education activity for third-year Bachelor students, inspired by a humorous question about the Geneva water jet. The exercise engages students in key scientific practices: reformulating everyday questions in scientific…
Newton's laws of motion perfectly explain or approximate physical phenomena in our everyday life. Are there any laws that explain or approximate technology's rise or fall? After reviewing thirteen information technologies that succeeded,…
Rate-based processes comprise an important set of scientific phenomena, as well as an important part of the K12 science curricula. Electric current is one such phenomenon, which is taught in various forms from 4th - 12th grades. Research…
Common research tasks ask students to identify a correct answer and justify their answer choice. We propose expanding the array of research tasks to access different knowledge that students might have. By asking students to discuss answers…
In this article we discuss a model used to introduce the concept of entropy with secondary school students. It can be used to discuss with students the reversibility of time, the tendency towards homogeneity and the link between probability…
One of the basic assumptions implicit in the way physics is usually done is that all causation flows in a bottom up fashion, from micro to macro scales. However this is wrong in many cases in biology, and in particular in the way the brain…
When talking to secondary school students, first impressions are crucial. Accidentally say something that sounds boring and you'll lose them in seconds. A physical demonstration can be an eye-catching way to begin an activity or spark off a…
The Plateau-Rayleigh theory essentially explains the breakup of liquid jets as due to growing perturbations along the length of the jet. The essential idea is supported by several experiments carried out in the past. Recently, the existence…
All schoolchildren know how often they breathe, but even experts don't know exactly why. The aim of this publication is to develop a model of the resting spontaneous breathing rate using physiological, physical and mathematical methods with…
Reductionism is a prevalent viewpoint in science according to which all physical phenomena can be understood from fundamental laws of physics. Anderson [Science, 177, 393 (1972)], Laughlin and Pines [PNAS, 97, 28 (2000)], and others have…
Einstein was deeply puzzled by the success of natural science, and thought that we would never be able to explain it. He came to this conclusion on the ground that we cannot extract the basic laws of physics from experience using induction…
Student learning of sound waves can be helped through the creation of group-learning classroom materials whose development and design rely on explicit investigations into student understanding. We describe reasoning in terms of sets of…
A sketch of three senses of emergence and a suggestive view on the emergence of time and the direction of time is presented. After trying to identify which issues philosophers interested in emergent phenomena in physics view as important I…
The purpose is to introduce in a clear and direct way the students of undergraduate courses in physics and/or astronomy to the subject of radiative transfer. A pedagogical revision is made in order to obtain the radiative transfer equation,…
After more than a century of history, the radiation-reaction problem in classical electrodynamics still surprises and puzzles new generations of researchers. Here we revise and explain some of the paradoxical issues that one faces when…
It is difficult for the common sense to admit that an object dropped from the top of the mast of a ship moving at a constant velocity falls down at the bottom of the mast because it keeps inside the horizontal movement of the ship. This…
Instruction in quantum mechanics is becoming increasingly important as the field is not only a key part of modern physics research, but is also important for emerging technologies. However, many students regard quantum mechanics as a…
The law of action-reaction, considered by Ernst Mach the cornerstone of physics, is thoroughly used to derive the conservation laws of linear and angular momentum. However, the conflict between momentum conservation law and Newton's third…
The recoil of atoms in dense ensembles during light matter interactions is studied using quantized vibrational states for the atomic motion. The recoil resulting from the forces due to the near-field collective dipole interactions and…