物理教育
Animated textures can be used to visualize the spatial structure and temporal evolution of vector fields at high spatial resolution. The animation requires two time-dependent vector fields. The first of these vector fields determines the…
In this paper I describe an in-class discussion activity aimed at helping elementary education majors in a physical science course think about issues surrounding the inclusion of "Intelligent Design" in public school science standards. I…
A new simple geometrical interpretation of complex numbers is presented. It differs from their usual interpretation as points in the complex plane. From the new point of view the complex numbers are rather operations on vectors than points.…
On the occasion of the birth centenary of the discovery of electron, I discuss its role in the area of Elementary Particle Physics. I emphasize that the discovery of electron marks the end of the speculation era lasting more than 2500…
We present a simple analytic scheme for calculating the binding energy of excitons in semiconductors that takes full account of the existing anisotropy in the effective mass, as a complement to the qualitative treatment in most textbooks.…
I discuss issue of how to adjust recitation grades given by different instructors in a large course, taking into account and correcting for differences in standards among the instructors, while preserving the effects of differences in…
The purpose of this paper is to make clear the difference between rigid and undeformable bodies in Relativity. The error of confusing these two concepts has survived up to the present day treatises. We hope it will not persist in the XXI…
We take J. S. Bell's commendation of ``frame-dependent'' perspectives to the limit here, and consider motion on a ``map'' of landmarks and clocks fixed with respect to a single arbitrary inertial-reference frame. The metric equation…
We illustrate in terms familiar to modern day science students that: (i) an uncertainty slope mechanism underlies the usefulness of temperature via its reciprocal, which is incidentally around 42 [nats/eV] at the freezing point of water;…
This paper presents some ideas which might assist teachers incorporating special relativity into an introductory physics curriculum. One can define the proper-time/velocity pair, as well as the coordinate-time/velocity pair, of a traveler…
We introduce our experiment of research-oriented teaching mainly in Nanjing University and Tsinghua University, China. The great population and enrollment in China makes it worth to concern. It lasts 20 years and involves thousands of…
The coordinate conditions for three exact solutions for the metric components of a coordinate system with constant acceleration or of a static plane symmetric gravitational field are presented. First, the coordinate condition that the…
We describe the development of a junior-senior level course for Physics majors designed to teach Mathematica skills in support of their undergraduate coursework, but also to introduce students to modern research level results. Standard…
Questions of participant understanding of the nature of an activity have been addressed in anthropology and sociolinguistics with the concepts of frames and framing. For example, a student may frame a learning activity as an opportunity for…
This note details a minimal effort program, Cash Participation, that quantifies class participation while increasing class energy, decreasing student apathy and removing student embraced anonymity.
The title page of Chapter 9 in Fundamentals of Physics (Halliday, Resnick, and Walker, 8th Edition, p. 201) shows a dramatic photograph of two Big Horn sheep butting heads and promises to explain how sheep survive such violent clashes…
In this paper we demonstrate that the light diffracted by a simple compact disc can be used to generate photographic images of a certain kind. Being the compact disc an axicon that generates a diffraction-free beam, we show that the…
The wireless networks technologies are becoming more prevalent. As part of our courses, we have to deal with the technical aspects of these technologies. However, the experience of mobile telephony has shown fears that these products can…
Including real-time data collection technology is a common practice to upgrade physics labs, and the assumption is such technology improves student learning, yet little has been done to demonstrate the effects of technology. Specific…
In the last one and a half centuries, the analysis of quaternions has not only led to further developments in mathematics but has also been and remains an important catalyst for the further development of theories in physics. At the same…