In this paper, we discuss a demonstration we have been performing for years with students from different levels, from physics students from our university to high school students in some talks aimed at encouraging them to study science. It provides visualization of Brewster's angle in an ingenious way using a "loaded" liquid crystal…

Experimental results are presented concerning the motion of a ball that bounces up an incline a few times then bounces back down again. The number of bounces up the incline is typically small since the speed of the ball in a direction parallel to the incline decreases rapidly, not only during each bounce but also while the ball is in the air. The…

Newton's laws are a ubiquitous topic in introductory physics instruction. One common problem involves asking what will happen if you stick your finger into a cup of water sitting on a scale. A way to solve the problem would be to first recognize that the water exerts a buoyant force upward on the finger, which students can recognize as being the…

The activity presented here is about an approximate or order-of-magnitude approach to information technology on the nano level, dealing in particular with the genetic code. Based on "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom", the famous and visionary paper by Richard Feynman, the activity provides insight into a core concept of nanoscience…

An ordinary soap bubble immersed in a pure carbon-dioxide atmosphere, created e.g. by sublimating chunks of dry ice (solid CO[subscript 2]), will expand within a few minutes to a volume exceeding the original one with a factor of almost ten. Considering that the bubble simultaneously experiences a cooling of ~30 ?C one would perhaps expect a tiny…

A number of useful and interesting exercises regarding nucleus and nuclear fission are performed to make these concepts more understandable to high school or even college students.

Concept inventories are widely used in physics education research, yet numerous studies show that concept inventories measure dramatically different learning gains in different demographic groups. Prior studies show that the performance gaps between demographic groups are already present in their preinstruction responses, suggesting that the…

In this study, our aim was to identify high school and university students' post-instruction conceptions about the law of conservation of mechanical energy (LCME). A cross-sectional survey design was used. Firstly, a test consisting of 14 multiple-choice questions was developed. 23 physics teachers analysed the test and concluded that our…

This article describes a simple way to introduce nanomaterials using the presence of carbon nanodots (CNDs) in widely available food. Budweiser® beer and Coca-Cola®, commercial foods that are commonly accessible, were utilized to demonstrate the optical property of nanoparticles. Specifically, green and violet laser pointers were employed for the…

The falling rod paradox, i.e. the fact that the tip of an almost horizontal rod falls with an acceleration 'higher than g', when the other end is hinged or supported, is a popular physics demonstration. It can be visualized by placing e.g. a coin on the tip of the rod and fixing a cup next to the coin. When the rod is released the free-falling…

Italian high school students carried out some activities within career guidance actions organized by the Department of Chemistry of Sapienza University (Rome) in order to promote enrollments in a chemistry Bachelor's course, thus remedying the shortage of professional chemists. Novel didactic sequences have been designed to facilitate the…

High school students learn the basic voltaic and electrolytic cell concepts during their last year prior to entering an undergraduate teacher-education science degree. During the 4 years of university, students complete a sequence of topics designed to build on conceptual understanding presented in previous years. At the end of their degrees,…

Experimental results are presented on the collision of a superball with two different wood blocks. The results are in reasonable agreement with a simple collision model where kinetic energy is conserved, but better agreement is obtained if a small loss of kinetic energy is assumed, as observed. The physics is slightly more complicated than the…

Viscous and Coulomb's friction combined contribute to the damping of a pendulum; however, they are usually treated as a silo effect. In this study, we investigate the combination of viscous and Coulomb damping in compound pendulum oscillation, employing two modern instruments that are cheap and handy to quantify the experiments, which are video…

Puzzles involving infinite networks of resistors are an engaging way for students to explore the idea of infinity and self-similarity in physics. Recently K Atkin has described one such puzzle, alongside a solution based on an equivalent finite network (2022 "Phys. Educ." 57 025015). Here we present a generalisation of this problem which…