A practical experiment is described to estimate the distance to a star using simple equipment, suitable for secondary or undergraduate students. The brightness of the star is visually matched to a miniature filament lamp, and its distance inferred from the inverse square law. Students gain an appreciation of astronomical units and practice in…

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…

In this study, it is aimed to develop practical teaching activities that can be used in optics teaching. For this purpose, a virtual laboratory environment was created in RayLab which is an application for design and simulation of optics on the iPad/iPhone. In this context, the dispersion of white light in the prism, the relationship between the…

Here, we present a 3D printed experimental apparatus that students can use to acquire interference and diffraction quantitative data from light passing through a single or double-slit experiment. We built a linear screw stage with a multiturn potentiometer connected to its leadscrew as a position sensor. Using an Arduino, we collected light…

Children are intrigued by switches that power a light source and by items that reflect light and sparkle, and they take notice of personal shadows cast on the playground. Many STEM fields draw upon understanding of light and shadow, such as astronomy, biology, engineering, architecture, and more. This book shows teachers how to engage children…

This paper mainly proposes a simple method to record scattered light rays via photography, presenting a clearer and brighter representation of the optical path. This technique is applied to the double-slit interference experiment and single-slit diffraction experiment typically conducted in general physics courses, and shows the intuitive results…

It is well known that when two waves are added they produce beats. These beats are the amplitude modulation of the initial waves and occur periodically at a rate equal to the frequency difference of the two waves. Acoustical beats arise from sound waves of nearly equal frequencies. Optical beats arise from the interference of two light waves of…

The January 2018 issue of "The Physics Teacher" saw two articles that featured the RSpec Explorer as a supplementary lab apparatus. The RSpec Explorer provides live video spectrum analysis with which teachers can demonstrate how to investigate features of a diffracted light source. In this article I provide an introduction to the device…

Background: Although a large number of adults with intellectual disabilities have depressive symptoms, non-pharmacological treatments are scarce. The present authors investigated whether bright light therapy (BLT) is effective in decreasing depressive symptoms compared to care as usual. Methods: This multicentre randomized controlled trial…

It is well known that the twinkling of stars in the night sky is due to turbulence within the earth's atmosphere causing localised fluctuations in refractive index. The paper describes a method for demonstrating the effect to learners during the daytime. This is accomplished by detecting audio frequency fluctuations in the level of direct sunlight…

Light is a topic that is often taught in year 3 (ages 7-8) in English schools, where children learn that light is needed for us to see, that it can be reflected from shiny surfaces and that shadows form when light is blocked by an object. They may also have some experience of how the size of shadows changes when the distance between a light source…

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…

It's not surprising that rainbows have received a great deal of attention: in textbooks, in magazines, and on the web. They are, after all, beautiful, fascinating, occasionally awe-inspiring, even a little mysterious. They are an almost perfect blend of natural beauty and simple physics. Has everything that can be said about rainbows already been…

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…

Colorful transitions of various acid-base indicators have been used to illustrate the concept of chemical equilibria, especially in spectrophotometric determination of the equilibrium constants or pKa values. To accommodate an online laboratory environment necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, this work employs color analyses from digital images…