Electromagnetism (E&M) is often challenging for students enrolled in introductory college-level physics courses. Compared to mechanics, the mathematics of E&M is more sophisticated and the representations are more abstract. Furthermore, students may lack productive intuitions they had with force and motion. In this article, we explore the…

Making meaning with math in physics requires blending physical conceptual knowledge with mathematical symbology. Students in introductory physics classes often struggle with this, but it is an essential component of learning how to think with math. Teaching the dimensionality of measured quantities and dimensional analysis (DA) is a valuable first…

In a paper (posthumously) co-authored by Isaac Newton himself, the primacy of geometric notions in pedagogical expositions of centripetal acceleration has been clearly asserted. In the present paper we demonstrate how this pedagogical prerogative can inform the design of an experiment involving an accelerometer-equipped smartphone rotating…

Games have often been used in the classroom to teach physics ideas and concepts, but there has been less published on games that can be used to teach scientific thinking. D. Maloney and M. Masters describe an activity in which students attempt to infer rules to a game from a history of moves, but the students do not actually play the game. Giving…

Addressing student conceptions with instruction has been a major issue in physics education for decades. However, too often the focus is on treating student ideas as "misconceptions" rather than as potentially productive ideas with varying degrees of sophistication. This paper introduces "learning progressions" as models that…

Multiple initiatives contend that all students should master computational thinking, including the "Next Generation Science Standards, the K-12 Framework for Computational Thinking," and Code.org. In turn, many physics teachers have begun to explore a variety of approaches to integrating computational modeling through programming. These…

Research identifies two domains by which mathematics allows learning physics concepts: a technical domain that includes algorithmic operations that lead to solving formulas for an unknown quantity and a structural domain that allows for applying mathematical knowledge for structuring physical phenomena. While the technical domain requires…

Thinking in Physics (TIP) is a new curriculum that is more effective than commonly used interactive engagement methods for students who have the greatest difficulty learning physics. Research has shown a correlation between learning in physics and other factors, including scientific reasoning ability. The TIP curriculum addresses those factors.…

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…

Kinematics is a topic students are unknowingly aware of well before entering the physics classroom. Students observe motion on a daily basis. They are constantly interpreting and making sense of their observations, unintentionally building their own understanding of kinematics before receiving any formal instruction. Unfortunately, when students…

Studies on cognitive aspects of science education, especially how students achieve conceptual change, have been a focus of interest for many years. Researchers of student learning and conceptual change have developed several easily applicable teaching strategies. One of these strategies is known as "discrepant events". Discrepant events are very…

When one end of a taut horizontal elastic string is shaken repeatedly up and down, a transverse wave (assume sine waveform) will be produced and travel along it. College students know this type of wave motion well. They know when the wave passes by, each element of the string will perform an oscillating up-down motion, which in mechanics is termed…

One of my goals as an instructor is to teach students critical thinking skills. This paper presents an example of a student-led discussion of heat conduction at the first-year level. Heat loss from a human head is calculated using conduction and radiation models. The results of these plausible (but wrong) models of heat transfer contradict what…