Related papers: It is about time to say "eureka!" in teaching phys…
We investigate the dynamics of student behaviors (posture, gesture, vocal register, visual focus) and the substance of their reasoning during collaborative work on inquiry-based physics tutorials. Scherr has characterized student activity…
Experiments performed in the Physics Laboratory play a significant role in understanding the concepts taught in the theory. A good accompanying laboratory manual serves as a concise guideline which students can use to complete the…
The transition of many educational activities from in-presence to online, due to the Covid-19 emergency, has caused various difficulties to students, especially with regards to maintaining concentration. Even and especially in online mode,…
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…
Writing is an integral part of the process of science. In the undergraduate physics curriculum, the most common place that students engage with scientific writing is in lab classes, typically through lab notebooks, reports, and proposals.…
I present my views on the future of America's program in particle physics. I discuss a variety of experimental initiatives that do have the potential to make transformative impacts on our discipline and should be included in our program, as…
Computation is becoming an increasingly important part of physics education. However, there are currently few theories of learning that can be used to help explain and predict the unique challenges and affordances associated with…
To effectively prepare engineering students requires of formation of a system of fundamental physical knowledge together with the ability to apply them in specific productive activities, both on fundamental and on the profiled-oriented…
Authentic research as a method of teaching science is gaining popularity in high schools and colleges. To make this research experience most efficient, students need adequate preparation in traditional science courses. Existing materials…
Exciting scientific results such as the discovery of the Higgs boson offer a great opportunity to engage young people in particle physics. International Particle Physics Masterclasses highlight how high school students across the world can…
A case for the teaching of classical thermodynamics with an explicit time variable, with phenomena involving changes in time, is made by presenting and solving a exercise in textbook style, and pointing out that a solution accords with…
Enhancing motivation and learning attitudes in an introductory physics course is an important but difficult task that can be achieved through class blogging. We incorporated into an introductory course a blog operated by upper-level physics…
Recent investigations have been carried out on critical analyses of beginning physics teachers confronted with questionable explanations. These studies raise the question of the choices made by teachers for their teaching once they have…
Physics as a discipline embeds conceptual meaning about the physical world in mathematical formalism. The meaning associated with mathematical symbols depends on context, and physicists can shift conceptual meaning by manipulating those…
Physics and mathematics are difficult enough without the aditional burden of bad habits. In this article, we examine some helpful habits that tend to be underemphasized by many physics teachers (mainly because they seem so obvious!).
Physics in schools is distinctly different from, and struggles to capture the excitement of, university research-level work. Initiatives where students engage in independent research linked to cutting-edge physics within their school over…
Physics makes powerful use of mathematics, yet the way this use is made is often poorly understood. Professionals closely integrate their mathematical symbology with physical meaning, resulting in a powerful and productive structure. But…
The World Year of Physics 2005 celebrates Einstein 1905. Too much celebration of a single character may be hazardous as an example for the younger generation. With such a motto in mind, I comment on some episodes in Einstein's scientific…
It is now widely believed that research should be an essential and integral part of under-graduate studies. In recent years there has been a conscious effort to bring research opportunities to the physics under-graduates in India. We argue…
There are compelling reasons to shift our pedagogy toward evidence-based active learning methods that substantially improve student success, and now plenty of resources to aid in that shift. These include the recent CBMS Statement on Active…