Related papers: Intuition in Einsteinian Physics
Einstein's relativity theory demands that all meaningful physical objects should be defined covariantly, i.e. in a coordinate independent way. Concepts of relative velocity, acceleration, gravity acceleration and gravity potential are…
Our main goal is to develop plans to increase physics enrollment. Once again we thoroughly analyze the problem from the beginning and reach the conclusion that the most appropriate starting point in this direction should be to look into…
This essay discusses the idea that a Theory of Everything would not be complete without a theory of consciousness as one of its parts, and the suggestion that new physics may be needed to describe consciousness. I argue that the motivations…
This paper re-centres the discussion of student learning in physics to focus on context. In order to do so, a theoretically-motivated understanding of context is developed. Given a well-defined notion of context, data from a novel…
At an early age, human infants are able to learn and build a model of the world very quickly by constantly observing and interacting with objects around them. One of the most fundamental intuitions human infants acquire is intuitive…
This is a report of a course on modern physics designed and taught to undergraduate science and engineering students in the Spring of 2013. The course, meant for freshmen, attempts to integrate statistical mechanics into non-classical…
An important step in learning to use math in science is learning to see physics equations as not just calculational tools, but as ways of expressing fundamental relationships among physical quantities, of coding conceptual information, and…
In physics, there is the prevailing intuition that we are part of a unique external world, and that the goal of physics is to understand and describe this world. This assumption of the fundamentality of objective reality is often seen as a…
This paper aims to provide physics teachers with tools to help deepen the understanding of the laws of electromagnetism. The fundamental contributions of our proposal are: a) to use quotes from mythical characters in the history of science…
Computational thinking in physics has many different forms, definitions, and implementations depending on the level of physics, or the institution it is presented in. In order to better integrate computational thinking in introductory…
Learning to use math in science is a non-trivial task. It involves many different skills (not usually taught in a math class) that help blend physical knowledge with mathematical symbology. One of these is the idea of quantification: that…
The interpretations of solutions of Einstein field's equations led to the prediction and the observation of physical phenomena which confirm the important role of general relativity, as well as other relativistic theories in physics. In…
This article is intended for physical scientists who wish to gain deeper insights into machine learning algorithms which we present via the domain they know best, physics. We begin with a review of two energy-based machine learning…
We are interested in learning models of intuitive physics similar to the ones that animals use for navigation, manipulation and planning. In addition to learning general physical principles, however, we are also interested in learning ``on…
A primary goal of physics is to create mathematical models that allow both predictions and explanations of physical phenomena. We weave maths extensively into our physics instruction beginning in high school, and the level and complexity of…
Newtonian gravity can be regarded as a hypothetic-deductive system where the inverse square law is the starting point from which gravitational phenomena are deduced. This operational form of presenting gravity endorses problem solving and…
Group Theory has become an invaluable tool in the physics community. Despite numerous introductory books, the subject remains challenging for beginners. Mathematica has emerged as a popular tool for research and education, offering various…
Though Einstein and other physicists recognized the importance of an observer being at rest in an inertial reference frame for the special theory of relativity, the supporting psychological structures were not discussed much by physicists.…
The decline in student interest in science and technology is a major concern in the western world. One approach to reversing this decline is to introduce modern physics concepts much earlier in the school curriculum. We have used the…
This is a pedagogical introduction to Brownian motion on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Einstein's 1905 paper on the subject. After briefly reviewing Einstein's work in its contemporary context, we pursue some lines of further…