This chapter illustrates the main warning signals that could help us to detect the flaws of an explanation in physics: internal contradiction (two examples); direct contradiction of a law of physics (one example); indirect contradiction of a law of physics (one example); logical incompleteness of an explanation (three examples); overgeneralization…

The history and philosophy of science (HPS) plays a special role in education. An elective HPS course on the philosophy of scientific experimentation for young scientists and graduate students of natural science is presented. The course bears a pragmatic character, and its main aims include the development of critical thinking (CT),…

Over the past several years, we have contributed articles to "TPT" that focus on a forensics-style reexamination of significant historical events. The purpose of these articles is to afford students the opportunity to apply basic principles of physics to unsolved mysteries and potentially settle the historical debate. We assembled the…

Care must be taken representing waves traveling in opposite directions. Erroneous results can occur when combining waves with the popular convention where a wave traveling to the right is [psi][subscript R] (x,t) = A sin (kx-[omega]t) and a left-traveling wave is [psi] (x,t) = A sin (kx + [omega]t). An easily overlooked pitfall is pointed out and…

Over the past several years, we have contributed several articles to "TPT" that focused on a forensics-style reexamination of historical events. In each article, we presented a case study as a pedagogy for teaching topics from introductory-level physics courses. Recently, we assembled our prior work into a series of…

This chapter provides several examples of early activation of a critical attitude during a discussion of questionable explanations. One concerns the use of the survival blanket to protect against the cold, a theme which leads to discussion of a compromise between two imperatives: that of returning as much energy as possible to oneself (by putting…

This article looks at how the nature of truth in science is not absolute and in accepting the idea that certain 'laws' are sufficiently true we can unlock the rigidity of discipline-based scientific thinking to make the possibility of tackling many of the grand challenges facing society a reality. The nature of Open Science is focused on the fact…

Critical analysis is universally advocated as a key goal of science teaching. In that context, the article explores the responses of beginning teachers (BTs) to explanations used in science education. Specifically, the study asks how BTs can be helped to ground their pedagogical choices in a critical analysis of explanations introduced during…

Communication of difficult concepts in the physics classroom can be negatively affected by the absence of a strong link between physics content and the experiences or interests of students. One possible method towards addressing this issue is to motivate physics content with reference to popular culture figures such as superheroes. We find…

A simple experiment on the determination of the coefficient of restitution of different materials is taken as the basis of an extendable work that can be done by students in an autonomous way. On the whole, the work described in this paper would involve concepts of kinematics, materials science, air drag and buoyancy, and would help students to…

The conjunction of three events has encouraged me to devote significant time to thinking about the pedagogical framework in my introductory courses. The three events were: doing a workshop addressing the Advanced Placement restructuring of the Physics B course with a stronger focus on critical thinking, finding out that "The Physics…

Most physics teachers would agree that one of the main reasons for her/his students to take physics is to learn to think critically. However, for years we have been assessing our students mostly on the knowledge of physics content (conceptually and quantitatively). Only recently have science educators started moving systematically towards…

One of the intermediate goals of STEM education has been turning our students into problem solvers and critical thinkers who are equipped with better scientific analysis skills. In light of this initiative, it is imperative that we, the educators, modify the way we teach classic introductory physics topics, and in the long run all sciences, and…

A container was placed on top of a piece of white paper, and a pin positioned so that it vertically touched an outside wall of the container. Students were asked to predict the image of the pin when it was observed from the top of the container. Two scenarios of either an empty container or a container completely filled with water were considered…

Biological flight mechanics is typically taught in graduate level college classes rather than in secondary school classes. We developed an interdisciplinary unit for advanced upper-level secondary school students (ages 15-18) to teach the principles of flight and applications to biological systems. This unit capitalised on the tremendous…