相关论文: Understanding How Students Use Physical Ideas in I…

This paper traces the seminal roles that physicists and mathematicians have played in the conceptual development of the biological sciences in the past, and especially in the 19th and 20th centuries.

We present an investigation into the interdisciplinary role of physics in a physics-for-non-physicists course at Pomona College. This work is guided by prior research into introductory physics for life-science (IPLS) courses, but attends to…

Over the past year and a half we have developed an innovative approach to the teaching of `Physical Science', a general education course typically found in the curricula of nearly every college and university. The new approach uses popular…

Biology is data-rich, and it is equally rich in concepts and hypotheses. Part of trying to understand biological processes and systems is therefore to confront our ideas and hypotheses with data using statistical methods to determine the…

We have designed an introductory laboratory course that engaged first-year undergraduate students in two complementary types of iteration: (1) iterative improvement of experiments through cycles of modeling systems, designing experiments,…

This article describes an undergraduate physics module at a university in England that places year 3 student physicists in secondary school classrooms for a semester. This is done as a way of introducing them to the occupation of secondary…

There are diverse teaching methodologies to promote both collaborative and individual work in undergraduate physics courses. However, few educational studies seek to understand how students learn and apply new knowledge through open-ended…

This Resource Letter draws on discipline-based education research from physics, chemistry, and biology to collect literature on the teaching of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics in the three disciplines. While the overlap among the…

Diffusion is a fundamental phenomenon that occurs ubiquitously in nature and remains the subject of continuous research interest. Understanding diffusion is a key to understanding leaving systems. In this Chapter, I discuss diffusion of…

Mathematics is a critical part of much scientific research. Physics in particular weaves math extensively into its instruction beginning in high school. Despite much research on the learning of both physics and math, the problem of how to…

Assessments are usually thought of as ways for instructors to get information from students. In this work, we flip this perspective and explore how assessments communicate information to students. Specifically, we consider how assessments…

Recently, there has been increased attention to improving laboratory instruction at all levels. At the introductory level, research results have shown differing levels of success based on the nature of the desired learning outcomes. In…

Upper-division physics students spend much of their time solving problems. In addition to their basic skills and background, their epistemic framing can form an important part of their ability to learn physics from these problems.…

We present a collection of biophysics examination problems that focus on electrodiffusion, the superposition principle, and currents in RC circuits, leading towards an understanding of the Hodgkin-Huxley model of action potentials. These…

Quantitative methods and mathematical modeling are playing an increasingly important role across disciplines. As a result, interdisciplinary mathematics courses are increasing in popularity. However, teaching such courses at an advanced…

We report on the development of students' ideas of probability and probability density in a University of Maine laboratory-based general education physics course called Intuitive Quantum Physics. Students in the course are generally math…

Learning to create, use, and evaluate models is a central element of becoming a scientist. In physics, we often begin an analysis of a complex system with highly simplified or toy models. In introductory physics classes, we tend to use them…

This article aims to introduce the broad field of soft active matter physics and its relevance to the life sciences in simple, accessible language. Although this area of research is relatively new, it has already demonstrated significant…

We investigate student understanding of energy and momentum concepts at the level of introductory physics by designing and administering a 25-item multiple choice test and conducting individual interviews. We find that most students have…

The rapidly increasing interest in the quantum properties of living matter stimulates a discussion of the fundamental properties of life as well as quantum mechanics. In this discussion often concepts are used that originate in philosophy…