物理教育
In India, as in many countries, the main focus in science classrooms is on exams rather than musing on the fascinating concepts and understanding of the world that science offers. This can mean that students lose interest in studying…
Six specific modes of reasoning about ratio and proportion have been delineated as a means of operationalizing expert practice. These modes stem from consideration of how physicists reason in context, are informed by prior work in physics…
We introduce a modified and simplified version of the pre-existing fully parallelized three-dimensional Navier--Stokes flow solver known as TPLS. We demonstrate how the simplified version can be used as a pedagogical tool for the study of…
Due to the shift of civilization from the Industrial Age to the Information Age, mathematical literacy has become a necessity in the twenty-first century. However, in order to learn and contribute to the mathematical community, one has to…
We describe the easy to customize and extend open source Java program Central force workbench that can be used in the classroom to simulate the motion of a particle (or a two-body system) under central forces. It may be useful to illustrate…
With the advent of high-level programming languages capable of quickly rendering three-dimensional simulations, the inclusion of computers as a learning tool in the classroom has become more prevalent. Although work has begun to study the…
Computation, the use of a computer to solve, simulate, or visualize a physical problem, has revolutionized how physics research is done. Computation is used widely to model systems, to simulate experiments, and to analyze data. Yet, in most…
At approximate radii of 200-300 km, asteroids transition from oblong `potato' shapes to spheres. This limit is known as the Potato Radius, and has been proposed as a classification for separating asteroids from dwarf planets. The Potato…
An experiment is described that enables students to understand the properties of atmospheric extinction due to Rayleigh scattering. The experiment requires the use of red, green and blue lasers attached to a travelling microscope or similar…
Separation of variables can be a powerful technique for solving many of the partial differential equations that arise in physics contexts. Upper-division physics students encounter this technique in multiple topical areas including…
Standardized conceptual assessment represents a widely-used tool for educational researchers interested in student learning within the standard undergraduate physics curriculum. For example, these assessments are often used to measure…
This paper presents results from the design and testing of an educational version of Quantum Moves, a Scientific Discovery Game that allows players to help solve authentic scientific challenges in the effort to develop a quantum computer.…
Student and public understanding of new discoveries in particle physics are enhanced by preparatory activities. Such activities give the user experience and context to understand a representation of the data associated with the discovery…
We describe the experience of running an Astrophysics outreach initiative involving traditional mass media like radio broadcast and new digital media like blog, microblogging and internet video channel. Some very successful preliminary…
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…
We report on several specific student difficulties regarding the Second Law of Thermodynamics in the context of heat engines within upper-division undergraduates thermal physics courses. Data come from ungraded written surveys, graded…
We describe an inexpensive instructional experiment that demonstrates the rotational energy levels of diatomic nitrogen, using the emission band spectrum of molecular nitrogen ionized by various processes in a commercial AC capillary…
We present a study of active learning pedagogies in an upper division physics course. This work was guided by the principle of deliberate practice for the development of expertise, and this principle was used in the design of the materials…
The use of validated conceptual assessments alongside more standard course exams has become standard practice for the introductory courses in many physics departments. These assessments provide a more standard measure of certain learning…
We review and extend existing frameworks on modeling to develop a new framework that describes model-based reasoning in upper-division physics labs. Constructing and using models are core scientific practices that have gained significant…