Related papers: Paradigms in Physics 2.0
A goal of PER is to understand how students use math in physics contexts. To investigate how students use math, we need to identify transitions between conceptual sense-making about physical systems and using mathematics to describe and to…
The Institute of Physics New Quantum Curriculum consists of freely available online learning and teaching materials (quantumphysics.iop.org) for a first course in university quantum mechanics starting from two-level systems. This approach…
Recent years have seen a growing interest in modernizing physics and science curricula around the world. While many science educators and curriculum developers design instructional resources to successfully introduce topics of Einsteinian…
In most physical sciences, students from underrepresented minority (URM) groups constitute a small percentage of earned degrees at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Bridge programs can serve as an initiative to increase the number of…
The physics community explores and explains the physical world through a blend of theoretical and experimental studies. The future of physics as a discipline depends on training of students in both the theoretical and experimental aspects…
In the Italian education system, secondary students (ages 14-19) are confronted with the foundations of quantum physics during the final term of scientific high school (pre-university year). The Italian Ministry of Education, University and…
Large Language Models (LLMs) have achieved remarkable progress on advanced reasoning tasks such as mathematics and coding competitions. Meanwhile, physics, despite being both reasoning-intensive and essential to real-world understanding,…
In the U.S., introductory calculus-based courses often acts as a gatekeeper to STEM degrees. But access to the prerequisite math is far from equal--students from low-income and racially marginalized communities are far less likely to have…
A brief account of some recent controversies about the teaching and learning of physics is presented. A shorter version of this outcome was accepted by The Physics Teacher, but publication is still pending.
An important goal of graduate physics core courses is to help students develop expertise in problem solving and improve their reasoning and meta-cognitive skills. We explore the conceptual difficulties of physics graduate students by…
This is the third series of the lab manuals for virtual teaching of introductory physics classes. This covers fluids, waves, thermodynamics, optics, interference, photoelectric effect, atomic spectra, and radiation concepts. A few of these…
Student learning in undergraduate physics laboratory courses has garnered increased attention within the PER community. Considerable work has been done to develop curricular materials and pedagogical techniques designed to enhance student…
The large number of published articles in physics journals under the title "Comments on ..." and "Reply to ..." is indicative that the conceptual understanding of physical phenomena is very elusive and hard to grasp even to experts, but it…
Problem solving is central to physics instruction. Results from Physics Education Research (PER), however, demonstrate that traditional ways of teaching with problem solving are inefficient and ineffective for promoting true physics…
Differentiable physics provides a new approach for modeling and understanding the physical systems by pairing the new technology of differentiable programming with classical numerical methods for physical simulation. We survey the rapidly…
At the beginning of academic year 2007-08, staff in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Glasgow started to implement a number of substantial changes to the administration of the level 1 physics undergraduate class.…
This is a series of short teaching papers dealing with specific topics in a standard first-year undergraduate Physics course. ----- Este texto comp\~oe-se de quatro pequenas notas -- independentes entre si -- em que se discutem alguns…
Scientists who study how the brain solves problems have recently verified that, because of stringent limitations in working memory, where the brain solves problems, students must apply facts and algorithms that have previously been well…
One of the objectives of the undergraduate physics curriculum is for students to become aware of the connections between the fundamental principles of classical physics and their personal experience. Nonetheless, numerous studies have shown…
Laboratory courses represent a unique and potentially important component of the undergraduate physics curriculum, which can be designed to allow students to authentically engage with the process of experimental physics. Among other…