Python is a free, text-based programming language that has already been used by those who do physics research to great effect. But students can also learn to use it and, through its use, learn other aspects of physics--especially ones that are difficult or impossible to perform as physical labs. This article serves as a most-fundamental start for…

Fractals are geometric objects used to describe irregular shapes that have a fractional dimension and commonly appear in nature. Although several proposals for the study of perfect fractals at the basic level are present in the literature, only few proposals for the study of real fractals exist, which does not seem reasonable considering the…

We report here on an effort to involve high school physics students in research on impacts of oil spills on marine mammals at a local university. We believe that the effort described here might be useful to others who would like to involve physics students in research, especially work of an interdisciplinary nature. The students learn to work…

There is a relatively simple way of using radioactive material in classroom experiments: uranium glass, which provides teachers with a suitable substance. By using the right computer software and a radiation sensor, it can be demonstrated that uranium glass emits radiation at a greater rate than the background radiation and with the aid of UV…

The universe of topics to choose from when teaching an astronomy course is astronomically immense. This wide array of opportunity presents some inherently difficult choices for teachers at all levels on how to limit the scope of the course to make the syllabus manageable. As but one example, consider that even the most experienced astronomy…

When working on an oral history project, my brother recommended that I download a free audio recording and editing program called Audacity[R]. I have since discovered that it is a fantastic tool for students to visualize sound waves and to understand the meaning of amplitude, frequency, and superposition. This paper describes a collection of…

The human eye and its vision problems are often used as an entry subject and attention grabber in the teaching of geometrical optics. While this is a real-life application students can relate to, it is difficult to visualize how the eye forms images by studying the still pictures and drawings in a textbook. How to draw a principal ray diagram or…

Computer simulations are widely used in physics instruction because they can aid student visualization of abstract concepts, they can provide multiple representations of concepts (graphical, trajectories, charts), they can approximate real-world examples, and they can engage students interactively, all of which can enhance student understanding of…

Experiments in mechanics often involve measuring time intervals much smaller than one second, a task that is hard to perform with handheld stopwatches. This is one of the reasons why photogate timers are so popular in school labs. There is an interesting alternative to stopwatches and photogates, easily available if one has access to a personal…

Systematic errors are often unavoidable in the introductory physics laboratory. As has been demonstrated in many papers in this journal, such errors can present a fundamental problem for data analysis, particularly when comparing the data to a given model. In this paper I give three examples in which my students use popular curve-fitting software…

This paper outlines the use of "how to" videos, in the form of a screencast using a tablet computer, and posting the videos online. These videos are useful for when students miss a class, for those students who need to review a lesson or examples used in class when doing homework or reviewing for a test, for instructors of online classes, and also…

Interactive (reformed) instruction helps students develop a deeper understanding of physics, a component of which is letting students explore physical phenomena first and then building upon their experience. However, the time required for a single group to collect sufficient data and the likelihood of measurement errors are often obstacles to…

Nearly all physics instructors recognize the instructional value of force diagrams, and this journal has published several collections of exercises to improve student skill in this area. Yet some instructors worry that too few students perceive the conceptual and problem-solving utility of force diagrams, and over recent years a rich variety of…

Students can be seen throughout any campus in America carrying their cell phones, laptop computers, and iPhones. I've seen a tremendous increase in the student use of laptop computers during lectures and students often ask for electronic copies of lectures rather than printed versions. In an attempt to adapt to my students' increasingly…

More and more physics instructors are making use of personal/classroom response systems or "clickers." The use of clickers to engage students with multiple-choice questions during lecture and available instructor resources for clickers have been well documented in this journal. Newer-generation clickers, which I refer to as classroom response…