Diffraction refers to a kind of optical phenomena which occurs when light approaches an element (object or aperture) whose features are in the range of the illuminating wavelength (small apertures, sharp edges). It can be explained by means of the undulatory nature of light or also geometrically by using simple ray optics. Diffraction phenomena…

Several properties of Earth's magnetic field (field vectors, time dependence) are measured in various locations using a smartphone/tablet magnetic sensor. To enable a proper use of the magnetic sensor as a classroom tool, the exact location of the sensor in the device and its resolution must be identified in a first step. Then, students may…

The Wright brothers, Wilbur and Orville, are often depicted as lone geniuses, secretly assembling the first successful powered aircraft far from civilization at Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. There is a germ of truth in the popular story, but only a germ. The brothers succeeded while so many other experimenters failed not because…

This chapter illustrates the main warning signals that could help us to detect the flaws of an explanation in physics: internal contradiction (two examples); direct contradiction of a law of physics (one example); indirect contradiction of a law of physics (one example); logical incompleteness of an explanation (three examples); overgeneralization…

Additive colors are interesting to young students. In this paper, we show a convenient and straightforward method to demonstrate this phenomenon by projector. It produces defocus blur and reduces imaging quality for color mixing. We believe this demonstration experiment can be performed in most classrooms.

Currently, the physics disciplines are represented by a significantly larger number of professional males, compared to females. Although the problem of underrepresentation of female physicists has several causes, one likely reason is the lower interest that female school students have in physics activities. Several instructional solutions have…

When the road is wet (there is a water layer on the road surface), the road marks become blurred and drivers are distracted. We discuss the contributing processes and identify which processes are dominant to the occurrence of this phenomenon. Modelling and a simple experiment demonstrate that the dominant processes are: (a) refraction of light by…

The pendulum has a great relevance in physics and it has been explored in educational papers from many theoretical or experimental points of view (see, for example, Refs. 1-12 and references therein). Here a method for the measurement of the gravitational acceleration with a large number of trials is presented; we assume that the systematic errors…

This research is part of the integration of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the Moroccan education system, our objective being to evaluate the use of computer-assisted experimentation (CAEx) in learning to encourage the authorities of the Ministry of National Education, Vocational Training and Sports to adopt the CAEx program…

What follows is a description of the procedure for and results of a simple experiment on the formation of impact craters designed for the laboratory portions of lower mathematical-level general education science courses such as conceptual physics or descriptive astronomy. The experiment provides necessary experience with data collection and…

Purpose: This study aims to determine whether there is a relationship between motivation and attitudes of students towards physics subjects in high school. Method: The type of research used is quantitative descriptive with correlational design. The data used by researchers were in the form of questionnaires/motivational questionnaires and…

This paper presents an intervention aiming to promote students' learning by enhancing their interest in the concept of energy. Junior high school students' learning and interest is evaluated after engaging in activities on work and energy. The intervention integrated hands-on and simulated experiments included a structured series of guided…

This article presents a part of the Inter-Tetra project. This study firstly reviews the literature on conceptions of experiments in didactics of math and didactics of physics to design questionnaires to survey the conceptions of experiments in teaching physics and teaching math in Vietnam. Thereafter, the survey has been conducted among the math…

This study describes a program that the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) carried out in partnership with Birmingham City Schools (BCS) to test an educational intervention, i.e., Hands-On Physics (HOP), among 8th grade students in predominantly minority schools. It also evaluated teachers' demographics and educational backgrounds. The…

Recently, I was tasked with the creation and execution of a new themed general education physics class called The Physics of Warfare. In the past, I had used the theme of a class, such as the physics of sports medicine, as a way to create homework and in-class activities, generate discussions, and provide an application to demonstrate that physics…