The refractive index (RI) is probably the single most important parameter in optical systems. Chromatic dispersion, on the other hand, indicates how the RI depends on the wavelength and is central in, e.g., optical communication systems. Chromatic dispersion also plays an important role when teaching optics due to the captivating natural…

Balancing exploration and anti-predation are fundamental to the fitness and survival of all animal species from early life stages. How these basic survival instincts drive learning remains poorly understood. Here, using a light/dark preference paradigm with well-controlled luminance history and constant visual surrounding in larval zebrafish, we…

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…

Data from the Kepler satellite were analysed using the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes database. With the participation of 53 students, we determined the parameters of the HAT-P-7b (Kepler-2) exoplanet system (transit duration, planet-to-star radius ratio, orbital period, semi-major axis and star mass). We used approaches that are easy to…

The Beer-Lambert law is a core spectroscopic relationship widely used across the undergraduate chemistry curriculum and beyond. The derivation of this model is a common topic for upper-level chemistry courses. But, due to its abstract nature, this derivation can often seem like a mathematical exercise detached from the molecular origins of…

Due to social distancing constraints during the COVID-19 pandemic, several experiments were designed in the Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 semesters in our Electrochemistry and Corrosion elective course to demonstrate electrochemical phenomena and applications at the students' homes with a kit sent by the school. We report here a student-designed…

Interest in smartphone-based learning, especially in the use of internal sensors in smartphones for physics experiments, is increasing rapidly. Internal sensors in smartphones such as acoustic sensor, optical sensor, and acceleration sensor can help researchers alleviate the problems including insufficient accuracy with low-cost equipment, high…

Virtual laboratory simulations can contribute to the educational objectives related to practical classes, especially in situations of online or hybrid teaching. We present a proposal for laboratory activity involving the quantification of proteins with the biuret reaction and measurement by visible light spectrometry. The student will be able to…

The topic of refraction and reflection of light at the boundary of transparent media is a fundamentally important one. The special case of total internal reflection is however commonly misrepresented in elementary textbooks. This paper addresses the problem and describes an experimental procedure for measuring and displaying reflected and…

When people perceive the world, what they see is based on the physics of light reflecting off surfaces and entering their eyes. Their brain then processes the raw data so that photoreceptor activity becomes perceptual awareness. Most textbooks and chapters on sensation and perception follow this formula, building student understanding of…

Malus's law states that the intensity of light after passing through two polarizers is proportional to the square of the cosine of the angle between the polarizers. We present a simple setup demonstrating this law. The novelty of our work is that we use a multi-turn potentiometer mechanically linked to one of the polarizers to measure the…

Fluorescence spectra excited by laser pointers have been the subject of several papers in "TPT". These papers all describe a fluorescence phenomenon in which the reflected laser light undergoes a change in color: this color change results from the combination of some partially reflected laser light and additional colors generated by…

Students often have difficulties comprehending situations in which wave characteristics of light are manifested. After teaching wave optics, we studied the level of understanding of reflective diffraction of light with a group of secondary school students, and the phenomenon of diffraction in general. We analysed the possibility of using…

This paper explores what place means for early childhood education at a time of global environmental precarity. We draw on fieldwork in Arctic Norway, where kindergarten children spend time with snow for more than half of the year. Children's movement attunes to the nuances and diversity of the snow, as seasons, temperature, light, wind and…

Incandescent lamps are not only good sources of electromagnetic energy radiations but their operating temperatures are comparable to the temperatures of stars also. These features can be exploited to teach apparent magnitude scale both theoretically and experimentally. The numerical illustrations presented corresponding to 10, 100, 1000 and 10 000…