Granular flows appear frequently in the natural world and in civil engineering applications. These flows can exhibit features which are surprising and counter-intuitive and are often used to test the limits of the classical continuum approximation for modelling of fluid flows. An important sub-class of the granular flows are the gravity-driven…

The first of the two postulates of relativity states that the laws of physics are the same in all inertial reference frames. Often it is assumed that the postulates are mainly concerned with objects moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light. However, the postulates are applicable at all speeds from a snail to a photon. To practically…

Students' understanding of forces in circular motion is often incomplete. The problems are not limited to confusions about centripetal acceleration and centrifugal forces. This paper considers possible effects of different interventions by a teacher who has discovered the many types of free-body diagrams drawn by students for circular motion in a…

Huygens' principle in which every point on a propagating wave acts like a point source of radiation is a foundation principle of physics. Normally, Huygens' principle is demonstrated by passing a wave, for example a water or light wave through an aperture comparable in size to the wavelength. In this paper, an experiment is described in which a…

For conducting laboratory experiments on Fresnel diffraction, the use of a simple point light source from an LED and the application of a modern smartphone for photographing the diffraction patterns are proposed. The developed devices allow the experiments to be carried out under normal laboratory lighting.

In this study, the kinetic friction coefficient for a block moving on an inclined plane was determined with the help of three different methods (a smartphone application, "Phyphox," a video analysis program, "Tracker" and a simulation program, "Algodoo") which can be performed easily using simple materials by the…

This research aims to develop a falling chain experiment apparatus using kitchen scales and digital cameras (smartphones). Digital cameras were used to observe and record changes in the mass of falling chains measured using kitchen scales. Video recordings from observations of falling chain masses were analysed using Tracker 5.1.1 software. The…

Developed by using ARKit, a novel app which can be used to detect position in physics experiments was introduced. The ARKit relies on a new technique. The result of the experiment presented in this study was satisfactory, suggesting that the new technique can be employed in position detection experiments/demonstrations that are conducted using…

The sensors in modern smartphones are a promising and cost-effective tool for experimentation in physics education, but many experiments face practical problems. Often the phone is inaccessible during the experiment and the data usually needs to be analyzed subsequently on a computer. We address both problems by introducing a new app, called…

Real situations are overlaid with virtual information using augmented reality technology. In a learning environment, this technology could give everyday relevance to abstract concepts. In this paper, we will show how physical structures in typical experiments can be simply augmented by virtual objects in physics classes. This is achieved by…

This study demonstrated that the constant average speed of a dynamic car could be measured and calculated using the smartphone magnetometer. The apparatus setup was built using a dynamic car, a linear track up to 1.50 m, a bunch of magnets, and a smartphone magnetometer application. The smartphone magnetometer application, 'Physics Toolbox Suite',…

Propagation of sound waves is one of the fundamental concepts in physics. Some of the properties of sound propagation such as attenuation of sound intensity with increasing distance are familiar to everybody from the experiences of daily life. However, the frequency dependence of sound propagation and the effect of acoustics in confined…

A fun activity is presented using singing wine glasses for introductory physics students. Students tune a white wine glass and a red wine glass to as many semitones as possible by filling the glasses with the appropriate amounts of water. A smart phone app is used to measure the frequencies of equal-temperament tones. Then plots of frequency…

A smartphone acceleration sensor is used to study two-dimensional harmonic oscillations. The data recorded by the free android application, Accelerometer Toy, is used to determine the periods of oscillation by graphical analysis. Different patterns of the Lissajous curves resulting from the superposition of harmonic motions are illustrated for…