The Crookes radiometer (also known as a light mill) is a fascinating sunlight-powered device, in which a set of vanes is placed inside a glass bulb within which a partial vacuum has been pulled. The vanes then rotate when sunlight shines on the bulb. The reason for the turning of the vanes was subject to intense debate and many students still have…

The coefficient of restitution (COR) for a collision is usually a number between 0 and 1 depending on whether the collision is completely inelastic, or perfectly elastic or something in between. That is the usual situation for colliding spheres or a ball dropped on a horizontal surface. A different situation arises when a bat collides with a ball.…

The impact force and duration when one billiard ball collides head-on with another is estimated by assuming that the balls are connected by a spring. The results are compared with a measurement when a billiard ball collides with a heavy, rigid surface.

This article presents the study of Fourier series experimentally, using the "ExpEYES"-17 kit in a different way. This familiar undergraduate experiment has been performed for teaching online laboratory classes when face-to-face classes were not possible, due to the "COVID"-19 pandemic. We chose parabolic and sawtooth waveforms,…

We discuss the limits of the equation of the period of a simple pendulum, T[subscript s] = 2[pi][square root]l/g, frequently used in high-school and university classrooms to measure the acceleration of gravity. We evaluate the relative error in determining the acceleration of gravity with this simple equation instead of a more realistic one,…

In this paper, we present a physical modeling activity whose objective is to allow students to determine the differences between a disk and a sphere using pure scientific criteria. Thereunto, we reproduce the Sun-Earth-Moon system with low-cost materials and compare the illumination effects on the Moon considering two possible shapes for it (a…

Quantum mechanics (QM) has become part of many secondary school curricula. These curricula often do not include the mathematical tools for a formal, mathematical introduction of QM. QM therefore needs to be taught at a more conceptual level, but making secondary school students understand counterintuitive QM concepts without introducing…

Recently, infrared cameras have become available as smartphone accessories. Being less expensive than regular infrared cameras they are readily affordable for schools and many teachers may even privately own one due to their potential to visualize all kinds of thermal phenomena in physics teaching. Any science teacher who wants to use such a…

This paper was inspired by the work of a previous contributor on the subject of modelling plague epidemiology by comparing it to the physics of series radioactive decay, RC transients, and fluid dynamics. An Arduino-based experiment to illustrate the fluid-dynamical case is described. Attention is drawn to important differences between systems…

The physics that underpins modern technology is based on Einstein's theories of relativity and quantum mechanics. Most school students complete their compulsory science education without being taught any of these Einsteinian concepts. Only those who take a specialised physics course have the opportunity to learn modern physics. In 2011, the first…

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…

We use analogies to provide introductory laboratory students intuition into measurement uncertainties. Using a battery-resistor circuit we discuss uncertainty concepts and derive expressions for uncertainty of the mean and sums of uncertainties. Finally, we draw attention to the fact that the interpretation of standard deviation as uncertainty…

Problems of optimization in natural science, technology, economics, and management are of great interest. Students also usually find them intriguing. However, the selection of such problems in introductory undegraduate physics textbooks is very limited and should be broadened. To that end, a model of traffic flow optimization, simple enough for…

SenseCube is a multisensor capable of measuring many different real-time events and changes in environment. Most conventional sensors used in introductory-physics labs use their own software and have wires that must be attached to a computer or an alternate device to analyze the data. This makes the standard sensors time consuming, tedious, and…

This study compares synchronous versus asynchronous online teaching in an introductory calculus-based physics class. Like many schools, our institution transitioned to online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. We held optional synchronous online sessions during the original class time, and approximately half of our students were regular…