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Drawing appropriate diagrams is a useful problem solving heuristic that can transform a given problem into a representation that is easier to exploit for solving it. A major focus while helping introductory physics students learn problem…
Many students in upper-division physics courses struggle with the mathematically sophisticated tools and techniques that are required for advanced physics content. We have developed an analytical framework to assist instructors and…
Group work is becoming increasingly common in introductory physics classrooms. Understanding how students engage in these group learning environments is important for designing and facilitating productive learning opportunities for…
Questions of participant understanding of the nature of an activity have been addressed in anthropology and sociolinguistics with the concepts of frames and framing. For example, a student may frame a learning activity as an opportunity for…
Learning to use math in physics involves combining (blending) our everyday experiences and the conceptual ideas of physics with symbolic mathematical representations. Graphs are one of the best ways to learn to build the blend. They are a…
This work proposes a novel method for estimating the influence that unknown static objects might have over mobile agents. Since the motion of agents can be affected by the presence of fixed objects, it is possible use the information about…
When considering performing an Introductory Physics for Life Sciences course transformation for one's own institution, life science majors' achievement goals are a necessary consideration to ensure the pedagogical transformation will be…
The description of an observer's measurement in general relativity and the standard model of particle physics is closely related to the spacetime metric. In order to understand and interpret measurements, which test the metric structure of…
The spatial dependence of magnetic fields in simple configurations is an usual topic in introductory electromagnetism lessons, both in high school and in university courses. In typical experiments, magnetic fields are obtained taking…
Sliding friction is usually introduced in high school, but rarely through activities in laboratory. A qualitative introduction to friction is presented by proposing exploration of different kind of materials in order to suggest which…
Predicting an agent's future trajectory is a challenging task given the complicated stimuli (environmental/inertial/social) of motion. Prior works learn individual stimulus from different modules and fuse the representations in an…
This paper is a small step towards the goal of constructing a coherent theory of physic and mathematics together. It is based on two ideas, the localization of mathematical systems in space or space time, and the separation of the concepts…
A vast scientific literature in physics education documents a general widespread difficulty in dealing with Electro-Magnetic Induction (EMI) at various levels of instruction. But, at the best of our knowledge, there is a lack of research…
Developing expertise in physics requires appropriate integration and assimilation of physics and mathematics. Instructors and students often describe physics courses in terms of their emphasis on conceptual and quantitative problem-solving.…
It is argued that static electric or magnetic fields induce Weyl-Majumdar-Papapetrou solutions for the metric of spacetime. Their gravitational acceleration includes a term many orders of magnitude stronger than usual perturbative terms. It…
We report results from a study designed to identify links between undergraduate students' views about experimental physics and their engagement in multiweek projects in lab courses. Using surveys and interviews, we explored whether students…
The exact wave functions, which describe the states of an electron, bound in the image potential, and the magnetic field, which is perpendicular to surface of a metal, are obtained. The correction terms to the energy of an electron in the…
Close and precise placement of irregularly shaped objects requires a skilled robotic system. The manipulation of objects that have sensitive top surfaces and a fixed set of neighbors is particularly challenging. To avoid damaging the…
We use the Survey of Thermodynamic Processes and First and Second Laws-Long (STPFaSL-Long), a research-based survey instrument with 78 items at the level of introductory physics, to investigate introductory and advanced students'…
It is becoming common to hear teaching advice about spending more time on the "physics of the problem" so that students will get more physical insight and develop a stronger intuition that can be very helpful when thinking about physics…