Using smartphones in experimental physics teaching offers many advantages in terms of engagement, pedagogy and flexibility. But it presents drawbacks such as possibly endangering the device and also facing the heterogeneity of available sensors on different smartphones. We present a low-cost alternative that preserves the advantages of…

Inquiry practices can be integrated into various settings that differ in terms of their constraints and hence in the scope and depth of the practices that students experience. Key policy papers suggest implementing a gradual learning sequence for inquiry practices so that students' learning experiences in more constrained settings can serve them…

The Bright Lights: Big Experiments! public engagement project enabled high school students Scottish S2 to prepare a short, 5 min video using their own words and in their own style to present a scientific experiment on the theme of light to their contemporaries via YouTube. This paper describes the various experiments that we chose to deliver and…

For students in biology, chemistry, or environmental science, diatoms offer excellent insight into watershed health and human impact on the environment. Diatoms are found globally in virtually every habitat that has sunlight and moisture, including polar seas, tropical streams, and on moist soils and mosses. Studying diatoms as biological…

In this paper we present three different methods for testing Bernoulli's law that are different from the standard "tube with varying cross-section." They are all applicable to high-school level physics education, with varying levels of theoretical and experimental complexity, depending on students' skills, and may even be…

A multiple day activity for students to create large-scale plastic objects from the biopolymer chitin (major component of lobster, crab, and shrimp shells) is described. The plastic objects created are durable and made from benign materials, making them suitable for students to take home to play with. Since the student-created plastic objects are…

The main issue of this paper is the discussion around the question "How can we teach and motivate the why-generation learners and the generation Z learners?". The aim of our project was to find out teaching and learning methods that teachers and learners can use in 21st century classroom. Strategies how to engage gen Y and gen Z learners…

Many students probably know something about space from playing computer games or watching movies and TV shows. Teachers can expose them to the real thing by launching their experiments into near space on a weather balloon. This article describes how to use high-altitude ballooning (HAB) as a culminating project to a chemistry unit on experimental…

Pioneering Mars: Turning the Red Planet Green with the Earth's Smallest Settlers (http://pioneeringmars.org) provides a partnership model for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) learning that brings university scientists together with high school students to investigate whether cyanobacteria from Antarctica could survive on…

This article describes the use of project-based instruction in activities and labs intended to develop higher-order thinking skills with high school students and pre-service teachers through the use of soap making.

Introducing students to the process of scientific inquiry is a major goal of high school and college labs. Environmental toxins are of great concern and public interest. Modifications of a vertebrate developmental toxicity assay using the frog Xenopus laevis can support student-initiated toxicology experiments that are relevant to humans. Teams of…

Ask any physicist what the preeminent journal in the field is, and I think the almost unanimous answer will be "Physical Review Letters" ("PRL"). This weekly journal of the American Physical Society publishes high-impact research from all the major subdisciplines of physics. This journal is not the one you would think is the first place a high…

Research has shown that certain ways of teaching can make a difference in whether students learn standards-based content. Many strategies have proven to be effective in teaching literacy, mathematics, science and social studies. These strategies have facilitated blending academic and career/technical subjects to make learning more meaningful for…

This design research describes the development of a student inquiry project in which upper-secondary school chemistry students learn domain-specific concepts by doing inquiry in a simulated inquiry community. The design of the inquiry project is based on the extended procedural and conceptual knowledge in science (PACKS) model; the student…

The University of Montana (UM)-Missoula has implemented a problem-based program in which students perform scientific research focused on indoor air pollution. The Air Toxics Under the Big Sky program (Jones et al. 2007; Adams et al. 2008; Ward et al. 2008) provides a community-based framework for understanding the complex relationship between poor…