Related papers: Physics Magic
Science has traditionally played an important role in sharing knowledge among people. Particle Physics, with its large experiments, has shown that one not only can share the knowledge among different cultures, but that one can also work…
The centuries-long practice of the teaching turned mechanics into an academic construct detached from its underlying science, the physics of macroscopic bodies. In particular, the regularities that delineate the scope of validity of…
Previous research has found that introductory physics students perform far better on numeric problems than on otherwise equivalent symbolic problems. This paper describes a framework to explain these differences developed by analyzing…
We present two programs that address needs to better prepare graduate students for their roles as professional physicists, particularly in the areas of teaching and education research. The two programs, Preparing Future Physicists (PFP) and…
I explore whether it is possible to make sense of the quantum mechanical description of physical reality by taking the proper subject of physics to be correlation and only correlation, and by separating the problem of understanding the…
In the past century many fundamental results on unpredictability, undecidability and uncertainty have compelled scientists to grapple with the idea that some questions may never be resolved within our current theories. While this…
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…
We describe an initiative at the University of Bonn, where the students develop and perform a 2 hour physics show for school classes and the general public. The show is entertaining and educational and is aimed at children aged 10 and…
In this review, we discuss some interesting issues in charm physics which is full with puzzles and challenges. So far in the field there exist many problems which have not obtained satisfactory answers yet and more unexpected phenomena have…
A tradition handed down among physicists maintains that classical physics is a perfectly deterministic theory capable of predicting the future with absolute certainty, independently of any interpretations. It also tells that it was quantum…
"Mathematicians, like physicists, are pushed by a strong fascination. Research in mathematics is hard, it is intellectually painful even if it is rewarding, and you would not do it without some strong urge." [D. Ruelle]. We shall give some…
As part of a longitudinal study into identity development in upper-level physics students, we used a phenomenographic research method to examine students' perceptions of what it means to be a physicist. The results revealed four different…
Education is a goal-oriented field. But if we want to treat education scientifically so we can accumulate, evaluate, and refine what we learn, then we must develop a theoretical framework that is strongly rooted in objective observations…
For many students, college physics courses have little or even negative impact on their beliefs about the connection between physics and the everyday world. One way to help students see this connection is to incorporate analysis of science…
The physics community explores and explains the physical world through a blend of theoretical and experimental studies. The future of physics as a discipline depends on training of students in both the theoretical and experimental aspects…
Physics in Films is an alternative version of the physical science course offered to non-science majors at the University of Central Florida. The course uses the popularity of Hollywood films to generate interest in science and to engage…
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…
In the recent development in a various disciplines of physics, it is noted the need for including the deformed versions of the exponential functions. In this paper, we consider the deformations which have two purposes: to have them like…
Classical linear wave superposition produces the appearance of interference. This observation can be interpreted in two equivalent ways: one can assume that interference is an illusion because input components remain unperturbed, or that…
Physics education research (PER) aims to improve how students solve problems. But whose problems are we teaching students to solve? Physics has grown up as a child of war, and PER stems from the cognitive revolution in psychology, which…