相关论文: Introductory physics: The new scholasticism

Most introductory physics textbooks ask students to ignore air resistance but include no analysis of the appropriateness of that approximation. Indeed the approximation is inappropriate in many textbook problems. This short supplementary…

Whoever has to learn or to teach thermodynamics is confronted with conceptual difficulties which are specific to this field of physics ([1],[2]). It seems that they can be eliminated by inserting relativity in the thermodynamic theory. The…

I discuss how to estimate the gas mileage of a car. This discussion, which covers air resistance and Reynolds numbers, describes one way to introduce dimensional analysis and order-of-magnitude physics into introductory physics (if only the…

We argue that most advances in science and technology during the past and the present centuries rely on modern physics concepts developed in the early $20$th century. The reliance is so profound that any improvement of literacy of science…

It is becoming common to hear teaching advice about spending more time on the "physics of the problem" so that students will get more physical insight and develop a stronger intuition that can be very helpful when thinking about physics…

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!).

While dry Coulombic friction is an elementary topic in any standard introductory course in mechanics, the critical distinction between the kinetic and static friction forces is something that is both hard to teach and to learn. In this…

This manuscript is written for students in introductory physics classes to address some of the common difficulties and misconceptions of the normal force, especially the relationship between normal and friction forces. Accordingly, it is…

Why is modern physics still today, more than 100 years after its birth, the privilege of an elite of scientists and unknown for the great majority of citizens? The answer is simple, since modern physics is in general not present in the…

This paper re-centres the discussion of student learning in physics to focus on context. In order to do so, a theoretically-motivated understanding of context is developed. Given a well-defined notion of context, data from a novel…

Thermodynamics could be seen as an expression of physics at a high epistemic level. As such, its potential as an inductive bias to help machine learning procedures attain accurate and credible predictions has been recently realized in many…

At many universities, astronomy is a popular way for non-science majors to fulfill a general education requirement. Because general-education astronomy may be the only college-level science course taken by these students, it is the last…

An interesting question to explore in physics classes is whether gravity violates the second law of thermodynamics. Standard physics textbooks provide little to no discussion of the relationship between entropy and gravity, and the same is…

Even though there has been a tremendous amount of research done in how to help students learn physics, students are still coming away missing a crucial piece of the puzzle: why bother with physics? Students learn fundamental laws and how to…

Textbooks frequently extol plate tectonics theory without questioning what might be wrong with the theory or without discussing a competitive theory. How can students be taught to challenge popular ideas when they are only presented a…

Much of astrophysics consists of the study of ionised gas under the influence of gravitational and magnetic fields. Thus, it is not possible to understand the astrophysical universe without a detailed knowledge of the dynamics of magnetised…

Introducing gravitational physics at high school provides educational means for bridging the gap between the image of science held by students and science itself. Natural language is fundamental in this learning. It engages students in…

When we teach physics to prospective scientists and engineers we are teaching more than the "facts" of physics - more, even, than the methods and concepts of physics. We are introducing them to a complex culture - a mode of thinking and the…

Holography as a subject is neglected largely in current physics lessons and in school books. Even though this topic might be complex, it is applicable and viable in the world that we live in. Holography lends itself to further develop…

I discuss an apparently simple ballistics problem: the time it takes an object to fall a small vertical distance near the surface of the Earth. It turns out to be not so simple; I spend a great deal of time on the quantitative assessment of…