Related papers: Embodying Newtonian Mechanics
In self-consistent N-body simulations of collisionless systems, gravitational interactions are modified on small scales to remove singularities and simplify the task of numerically integrating the equations of motion. This `gravitational…
This is the first of a series of papers that we intend to publish about the epistemology of fundamental physics in its current state. One of the main objectives of these papers is to improve our understanding of fundamental physics (and…
In this paper we give the outline of a lecture given to undergraduate students aiming at understanding why physicists are so much interested in the Higgs boson. The lecture has been conceived for students not yet familiar with advanced…
In recent years, computing has become an important part of the way we teach and learn physics. Teachers, both at high school and college levels, now use computational activities in many of their courses. Physics departments are offering…
[Taken from the "README" in the book] My goal with this book is to provide some kind of bridge for mathematics between the high-school-level and college-level for physics students. From my perspective, our job as physicists is to observe…
A difficult challenge in physics education is to design professional development programs for teachers, which can lead to fundamental changes in their practise. We report all activities for physics teachers in the context of the National…
The objective of this project is to compare the effectiveness of teaching styles used in high school physics classes and the methods used to assess them. We would like to determine those approaches to physics at the high schools that work…
Making meaning with math in physics requires blending physical conceptual knowledge with mathematical symbology. Students in introductory physics classes often struggle with this, but it is an essential component of learning how to think…
Mathematics can serve many functions in physics. It can provide a computational system, reflect a physical idea, conveniently encode a rule, and so forth. A physics student thus has many different options for using mathematics in his…
With the expansion of e-learning course curricula and the affordability of haptic devices, at-home virtual laboratories are emerging as an increasingly viable option for e-learners. We outline three novel haptic simulations for the…
In active engagement physics classrooms, students get opportunities to make sense of physics together through discussion. They do not always take up these opportunities, in part because of the risk of sharing their ideas and having them…
The united rest mass and charge of a particle correspond to the two forms of the same regularity of the unified nature of its ultimate structure. Each of them contains the electric, weak, strong and the gravitational contributions. As a…
Introducing gravitational physics at high school provides educational means for bridging the gap between the image of science held by students and science itself. Natural language is fundamental in this learning. It engages students in…
Our understanding of the four basic concepts of Physics -- space, time, matter and force -- has undergone radical change in the course of work on unification, starting with Maxwell's unification of electricity with magnetism, all the way to…
What does it mean to "make sense" of physics? It's not a simple question. Most people have an intuitive feeling for when things do (or do not) make sense to them. But, putting this feeling into words--especially actionable words--is another…
Although rare, collisions of two or more bodies in the N-body problem are apparent obstacles at which Newton's Law of Gravity ceases to make sense. Without understanding the nature of collisions, a complete understanding of the N-body…
We discuss a study in a first year college introductory physics course for physical science and engineering majors that shows that women, on average, feel less recognized by their physics instructors than men as students who can excel in…
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…
Many Physics Education Researchers have discussed the positive correlation between students' incoming mathematics skills and performance in their physics classes. Thus, in order to strengthen their performance gains in their physics…
I present an elementary essay on some issues related to nonrelativistic quantum mechanics, which is written in the spirit of extreme simplicity, making it an easy-to-read paper. Moreover, one can find a useful collection of ideas and…