An experiment to match five white solids with ascorbic acid, citric acid, potassium hydroxide, sodium chloride, and urea is reported here. This 4 h experiment is an integrated practice of two experimental techniques, calorimetry and titration. Students conduct an extensive literature search on the properties of the five compounds and plan the…

Limiting case analysis (LCA) is important to practicing physicists. Yet, there is little concrete guidance for physics educators, and a lack of consensus in the research community about how to help students learn, and learn from, limiting case analysis. In this study, we first review existing literature to find commonalities and variations in how…

Many research results show that students often highlight "mixed-type" reasoning when tackling problematic situations and problems. This reasoning is based on the simultaneous use of common-sense and mere descriptions of facts, perceived as sufficient to build an "explanation" of observed or proposed situations and problems.…

The present investigation aims to analyze the knowledge levels and chemical representation levels of pre-service primary school teachers (PPSTs) on the experiment of distillation. For this purpose, the cross-sectional survey technique, one of the quantitative research designs was employed. The study was carried out at a Faculty of Education in the…

A quasi-experimental control group pre- and post-test study was used to determine the effect of a Multi-Step Inquiry (MSI) approach on pre-service elementary school teacher's conceptual understanding. The MSI study involved the development of a conceptual workbook, and a Physical Science Concept Inventory. The conceptual workbook has activities…

The concept of the centre of mass of a rigid body as a virtual point where the weight force acts is not easy to understand without a number of supporting school experiments. In school practice, however, experiments on this topic are often limited to a few of the simplest cases in which a simple flat body, such as a triangle or rectangle, is hung…

Indonesia and many other developing countries have a vast youth population, yet limited facilities for physics learning. The major purposes of this study are to develop low-cost, technology-enhanced physical and virtual laboratories and to investigate their effects on various learning objectives, including conceptual understanding, inquiry…

In this paper, we examined teachers' understanding of electrical concepts such as power, current and potential difference based on how these concepts were applied to understand the relative brightness seen in bulbs of different wattage under different connections--series or parallel. From the responses of teachers to a concept question, we…

During a five-year period the authors taught over 100 students in a graduate course (The Nature of Science) counting toward teacher certification at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Despite the fact that students had undergraduate degrees in the sciences, most of them found the application of models in science challenging and the…

Conceptual change teaching is an instructional method that helps students modify, extend, or exchange their alternative conceptions for the appropriate scientific conceptions. Provides activities and a diagnostic test to apply the method to the concepts of heat and temperature. (MDH)