Related papers: The Vocabulary of Introductory Physics and its Imp…
Popular media is an unspoken yet ever-present element of the physics landscape and a tool we can utilize in our teaching. It is also well-understood that students enter the physics classroom with a host of conceptions learned from the world…
One finding of cognitive research is that people do not automatically acquire usable knowledge by spending lots of time on task. Because students' knowledge hierarchy is more fragmented, "knowledge chunks" are smaller than those of experts.…
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…
Defining interdisciplinary physics today requires first a reformulation of what is physics today, which in turn calls for clarifying what makes a physicist. This assessment results from my forty year journey arguing and fighting to build…
Most introductory quantum physics instructors would agree that transitioning students from classical to quantum thinking is an important learning goal, but may disagree on whether or how this can be accomplished. Although (and perhaps…
We present results of our investigation into student understanding of the physical significance and utility of the Boltzmann factor in several simple models. We identify various justifications, both correct and incorrect, that students use…
Helping students become proficient problem solvers is a major goal of many physics courses from introductory to advanced levels. In fact, physics has often been used by cognitive scientists to investigate the differences between the…
There is some evidence that conceptual inquiry-based introductory physics lab curricula, such as RealTime Physics, may improve students' understanding of physics concepts. Thus, these curricula may be attractive for instructors who seek to…
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…
Uncertainty is an important concept in physics laboratory instruction. However, little work has examined how students reason about uncertainty beyond the introductory (intro) level. In this work we aimed to compare intro and beyond-intro…
Instructors and researchers think "thinking like a physicist" is important for students' professional development. However, precise definitions and observational markers remain elusive. We reinterpret popular beliefs inventories in physics…
Among the many decisions to be made in their teaching practice, physics teachers must decide how to explain each particular phenomenon to students. This study explores student teachers' (STs) decision-making process when presented with…
Transformation equations for physical quantities that characterize plane electromagnetic wave propagation in transparent optical media are presented. The Doppler effect, and measurements performed by an observer moving with the wave are…
This paper reviews research results obtained from Einsteinian physics programs run by different instructors with Years 6, 9, 10 and 11 students using the models and analogies described in Parts 1 and 2. The research aimed to determine…
The process of cognition is analysed to adjust the set theory to physical description. Postulates and basic definitions are revised. The specific sets of predicates, called presets, corresponding to the physical objects identified by an…
In this paper, we discuss the question whether a physical "simplification" of a model makes it always easier to study, at least from a mathematical and numerical point of view. To this end, we give different examples showing that these…
Drawing appropriate diagrams is a useful problem solving heuristic that can transform a give problem into a representation that is easier to exploit for solving it. A major focus while helping introductory physics students learn problem…
Co-occurrence statistics based word embedding techniques have proved to be very useful in extracting the semantic and syntactic representation of words as low dimensional continuous vectors. In this work, we discovered that dictionary…
Modification of three ideas underlying Newton's original world view, with only minor changes in context, might offer two advantages to introductory physics students. First, the students will experience less cognitive dissonance when they…
Whoever has to learn or to teach thermodynamics is confronted with conceptual difficulties which are specific to this field of physics ([1],[2]). It seems that they can be eliminated by inserting relativity in the thermodynamic theory. The…