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In 2016, the Department of Physics at Oregon State University began a process to revise our Paradigms in Physics curriculum for physics majors. We began with a colloquium to inform the department of our plans and request their assistance,…
University course ranking forums are a popular means of disseminating information about satisfaction with the quality of course content and instruction, especially with undergraduate students. A variety of policy decisions by university…
Physics plays a fundamental role in advancing pharmacy education and research, providing theoretical underpinnings and practical tools necessary to address complex challenges in drug development, delivery, and diagnostics. This review…
In a recent report, the American Association of Physics Teachers has developed an updated set of recommendations for curriculum of undergraduate physics labs.1 This document focuses on six major themes: constructing knowledge, modeling,…
These lectures review phases and phase transitions of the Standard Model, with emphasis on those aspects which are amenable to a first principle study. Model calculations and theoretical ideas of practical applicability are discussed as…
This is a report on a qualitative study of students' learning where a physics computer simulation session is used to supplement lectures on the topic. Drawing on phenomenography as the analytical framework, the students' learning-focuses…
We discuss the categorization of 20 quantum mechanics problems by physics professors and undergraduate students from two honors-level quantum mechanics courses. Professors and students were asked to categorize the problems based upon…
We re-consider the old problem of Brownian motion in homogeneous high-temperature thermal environment. The semiclassical theory implies that the diffusion coefficient does not depend on whether the thermal fluctuations are correlated in…
Biophysics is a subject that is spread over many disciplines and transcends the skills and knowledge of the individual student. This makes it challenging both to teach and to learn. Educational materials are described to aid in teaching…
Turbulent thermals emerge in a wide variety of geophysical and industrial flows, such as atmospheric cumulus convection and pollutant dispersal in oceans and lakes. When a buoyant fluid mass rises, or sinks, heat and mass transfers occur by…
Time-varying media, i.e., materials whose properties dynamically change in time, have opened new possibilities for thermal emission engineering by lifting the limitations imposed by energy conservation and reciprocity, and providing access…
Most STEM students experience the introductory physics sequence in large-enrollment (N $\gtrsim$ 100 students) classrooms, led by one lecturer and supported by a few teaching assistants. This work describes methods and principles we used to…
We offer second year students the opportunity to explore Current Topics in Biophysics in a course co-taught by a physicist and a biologist. The interdisciplinary course allows university students to engage in analytical thinking that…
Controlling and detecting thermal radiation is of vital importance for varied applications ranging from energy conversion systems and nanoscale information processing devices to infrared imaging, spectroscopy and sensing. We review the…
The objective of physics laboratory training is to develop, in students, a variety of important cognitive and psycho-motor abilities related to experimental physics. These include conceptual understanding, procedural understanding,…
The thermodynamics with medium effects expressed by the dispersion relation of the temperature and density dependent particle mass is studied. Many previous treatments have been reviewed. A new thermodynamical treatment based on the…
In this paper, we revisit the claim that many partition functions are invariant under reflecting temperatures to negative values (T-reflection). The goal of this paper is to demarcate which partition functions should be invariant under…
Systems at finite temperature make up the vast majority of realistic physical scenarios. Indeed, although zero temperature is often accompanied by simpler mathematics, the richness in physical results is evident when one considers the…
One of the most intriguing features of string thermodynamics is thermal duality, which relates the physics at temperature T to the physics at inverse temperature 1/T. Unfortunately, the traditional definitions of thermodynamic quantities…
The mathematical properties associated with the widely accepted concept of the extensivity of many of the common thermodynamic variables are examined and some of their consequences considered. The possible conflict between some of these and…