We report an educational tool for the upper level undergraduate quantum chemistry or quantum physics course that uses a symbolic approach via the PySyComp Python library. The tool covers both time-independent and time-dependent quantum chemistry, with the latter rarely considered in the foundations course due to topic complexity. We use quantized…

In this article, we demonstrate the use of a simple pendulum to explore the concepts of kinematics and dynamics. A simple homemade pendulum and a phone-based accelerometer are used to determine, at various points in time, the acceleration of a moving train. The dynamical and kinematics data from the homemade pendulum and the accelerator can then…

One of the main topics of elementary physics is the idea that every material is composed of "little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one other." These particles could be atoms or molecules. Atoms are the smallest part into…

In general, undergraduate experimental physics laboratories do not usually have experiments designed to address rolling friction and to measure the value of the rolling friction coefficient. This work explores an experiment, which has the potential to arouse students' curiosity about rolling friction by addressing a counterintuitive aspect of the…

We look at the problem of the minimum speed of projectiles in a constant gravitational field. In the absence of resistance, the problem may be studied in the frame of a high school curriculum. One needs only Newton's laws and a minimum amount of analytic geometry to compute the orbit, which turns out to be parabolic. Furthermore, in case the…

Free fall is commonly discussed as an example of the equivalence principle, in the context of a homogeneous gravitational field, which is a reasonable approximation for small test masses falling moderate distances. Newton's law of gravity provides a generalisation to larger distances, and also brings in an inhomogeneity in the gravitational field.…

In the field of physics teaching, the simple pendulum provides a very simple way to study the harmonic oscillator, the source of some fundamental concepts such as periodicity, relaxation time and anharmonicity. As such, its experimental study is frequently integrated into high school or first year university programs. With this in mind, in this…

We compare the period of oscillation of an ideal simple pendulum with the period of a more "real" pendulum constituted of a rigid sphere and a rigid slender rod. We determine the relative error in the calculation of the local acceleration of gravity if the period of the ideal pendulum is used instead of the period of this real pendulum.

The magneto-kinematic effect has been previously observed for the case of a rotating permanent magnet. Using this effect, this paper presents a novel method for calculation of the induced electromotive force (EMF) in a conductor for the case of rectilinear motion of a 25.4 mm diameter permanently magnetized sphere (magnetic dipole) past the…

In this paper, we revisit, theoretically and experimentally, the fall of a folded U-chain and of a pile-chain. The model calculation implies the division of the whole system into two subsystems of variable mass, allowing us to explore the role of tensional contact forces at the boundary of the subsystems. This justifies, for instance, that the…

At our university, students in introductory physics classes perform a laboratory exercise to measure the range of a projectile fired at an assigned angle. A set of photogates is used to determine the initial velocity of the projectile (the launch velocity). We noticed a systematic deviation between the experimentally measured range and the range…

The biharmonic oscillator and the asymmetric linear well are two confining power-law-type potentials for which complete bound-state solutions are possible in both classical and quantum mechanics. We examine these problems in detail, beginning with studies of their trajectories in position and momentum space, evaluation of the classical probability…

I will propose here a kinematic approach for measuring the drag coefficient of rotational symmetric objects falling through liquids. For this, I will show that one can obtain a measurement of the drag coefficient of a rotational symmetric object by numerically solving the equation of motion describing its fall through a known liquid contained in a…

A computational experiment that investigates the optical activity of the amino acid valine has been developed for an upper-level undergraduate physical chemistry laboratory course. Hybrid density functional theory calculations were carried out for valine to confirm the rule that adding a strong acid to a solution of an amino acid in the l…

This laboratory exercise demonstrates fundamental principles of mammalian locomotion. It provides opportunities to interrogate aspects of locomotion from biomechanics to energetics to body size scaling. It has the added benefit of having results with robust signal to noise so that students will have success even if not "meticulous" in…