In high school, and also in introductory physics courses in higher levels of schooling, the law of universal gravitation of planets is introduced by postulating Johannes Kepler's three laws, and later Isaac Newton's law of the inverse of the square of the distance to the Sun. The justification of the laws is only achieved in advanced courses in…

About 30 years ago I taught a series of summer enrichment programs for high school physics teachers, using funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes. I deliberately chose teachers from smaller cities and towns who were unlikely to have contact with other physics teachers. One of my more interesting teachers came from a rural area in a far…

This study proposes methods of reporting results of physics conceptual evaluations that more fully characterize the range of outcomes experienced by students with differing levels of prior preparation, allowing for more meaningful comparison of the outcomes of educational interventions within and across institutions. Factors leading to variation…

It is beneficial for quantum mechanics students to have a unified understanding of eigentheory concepts, so they can recognize the shared structure of mathematized phenomena from the different quantum mechanical systems of spin, energy, or position and recognize those as instantiations of the same overarching concept. Quantum mechanics instructors…

Involving students in laboratory and inquiry-based activities can help them understand the concepts of physics. However the learning process should not only focus on the concepts. Moreover, the advantages of using virtual or physical labs are still under examination. The purpose of this study is to analyse which of the two modes (virtual or…

We consider the operation of the hypothetical mechanical vehicle driven by an engine powered by small rockets introduced by P D Hanstead in the inaugural volume of this journal. Hanstead arrived at three contradictory conclusions regarding the change in velocity should some of the rockets malfunction at a particular time. This thought experiment…

The family of paths of ideal projectiles shot from a point with a common value of speed and at different angles to the horizontal has several interesting properties associated with it. For example, Chapou et al. have shown that an ellipse passes through the apexes of these parabolic paths. This observation encouraged us to further explore this…

The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) is a popular multiple-choice instrument used to measure a student's conceptual understanding of Newtonian mechanics. Recently, a network analytic technique called module analysis has been used to identify responses to the FCI and other conceptual instruments that are preferentially selected together by students;…

In a traditional teaching approach, a physics course begins with mechanics, and generally the braking effect due to magnetic interactions is not mentioned among the various types of friction presented (static, sliding, rolling) because students will discover magnetism only in later chapters. In our didactic experience this traditional choice is…

A classical mechanical structure with an internal degree of freedom is shown to reflect off a potential well. Such behavior is impossible for point-like or rigid classical particles. This numerical study provides insight for students studying internal energy and degrees of freedom.

If a ball rolls in a circular path on a horizontal surface at constant speed then its horizontal rotation axis changes direction with time. A simple experiment is presented showing that the torque applied to the ball is equal to the rate of change of its angular momentum, even though the magnitudes of its angular velocity and angular momentum…

This study analyses the effectiveness of directed vs. minimally directed inquiry-based instructional approaches in improving students' attitudes toward physics. It specifically compares the impacts of cognitively guided instructional strategy (CGIS) and Cubing instructional strategy (CIS) on student attitudes. Using a pretest--post-test…

We will present a problem-solving method for the dynamics of a projectile that has two perpendicular acceleration vectors through rotation of the axes. This methodology of reparameterizing the two-dimensional system simplifies the speed optimization calculus.

Transfer of structural math knowledge to physics is difficult for students. While research suggests various improvement techniques, enhancing parallelism of algebraic structures used in physics to those studied in mathematics courses seems underrepresented. This paper proposes an alternative way of introducing wave functions as a set of parametric…

Recent research has indicated that the utilization of digital technologies among Nepal's secondary school teachers is minimal. A multiple case study research design was employed to explore how Physics teachers at the secondary level utilized digital technologies for teaching Physics and the challenges they encountered in adopting new instructional…