The article "Torsional Oscillations with Lorentz Force" by Paul Gluck provides a glimpse into the major world of ancient physics demonstrations in the late 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. The apparatus that was described and similar pieces of apparatus are the basis for many memorable but long forgotten educational demonstrations. The…

What are the consequences of calling things by their names? Six experiments investigated how classifying familiar objects with basic-level names (chairs, tables, and lamps) affected recognition memory. Memory was found to be worse for items that were overtly classified with the category name--as reflected by lower hit rates--compared with items…

A major challenge in conducting classroom experiments for larger classes is the complexity of assembling responses and reporting feedback to students. The author demonstrates how mobile phone text messaging can be used to overcome the limitations of pencil-and-paper experiments without incurring the costs of full computerization. Students submit…

Although it is intuitive that familiarity with complex visual objects should aid their preservation in visual working memory (WM), empirical evidence for this is lacking. This study used a conventional change-detection procedure to assess visual WM for unfamiliar and famous faces in healthy adults. Across experiments, faces were upright or…

In 3 experiments the authors used a new contextual bias paradigm to explore how quickly information is extracted from a scene to activate gist, whether color contributes to this activation, and how color contributes, if it does. Participants were shown a brief presentation of a scene followed by the name of a target object. The target object could…

First reported in the early 1930s, variation in the ability to taste phenylthiocarbamide (PTC) has since become one of the most widely studied of all human genetic traits. Guo and Reed (2001) provide an excellent review of work on this polymorphism prior to the identification and sequencing of the PTC gene by Kim et al. (2003), and Wooding (2006)…

Plants and insects share a long evolutionary history characterized by relationships that affect individual, population, and community dynamics. Plant-herbivore interactions are a prominent feature of this evolutionary history; it is by plant-herbivore interactions that energy is transferred from primary producers to the rest of the food web. Not…

In four experiments, we investigated how listeners compensate for reduced /t/ in Dutch. Mitterer and Ernestus [Mitterer, H., & Ernestus, M. (2006). "Listeners recover /t/s that speakers lenite: evidence from /t/-lenition in Dutch." "Journal of Phonetics," 34, 73-103] showed that listeners are biased to perceive a /t/ more easily after /s/ than…

Four experiments investigated classroom learning by deaf college students receiving lectures from instructors signing for themselves or using interpreters. Deaf students' prior content knowledge, scores on postlecture assessments of content learning, and gain scores were compared to those of hearing classmates. Consistent with prior research, deaf…

Orthographic and phonological processing skills have been shown to vary as a function of reader skill (Stanovich & West, "Reading Research Quarterly, 24", 402-433, 1989; Unsworth & Pexman, "Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 56A", 63-81, 2003). One variable known to contribute to differences between readers of higher and lower skill is…

A. P. Blaisdell, K. Sawa, K. J. Leising, and M. R. Waldmann (2006) reported evidence for causal reasoning in rats. After learning through Pavlovian observation that Event A (a light) was a common cause of Events X (an auditory stimulus) and F (food), rats predicted F in the test phase when they observed Event X as a cue but not when they generated…

Eyewitness identification decisions are vulnerable to various influences on witnesses' decision criteria that contribute to false identifications of innocent suspects and failures to choose perpetrators. An alternative procedure using confidence estimates to assess the degree of match between novel and previously viewed faces was investigated.…

We have developed a multistep inorganic synthesis experiment for our second-year undergraduate teaching laboratory that introduces students to modern organometallic chemistry. The ligands are prepared in two simple steps and the preparation of an air-stable silver carbene complex is accomplished in the third step. The students are introduced to…

A classroom demonstration detailing the procedure for the separation of a ternary mixture consisting of intensely colored compounds using silica gel column chromatography is described. The audience can follow the compounds during their passage through the column as individual, colored bands while learning about different tools and techniques used…

Measured magnetic susceptibilities of paramagnetic substances must typically be corrected for their underlying diamagnetism. This correction is often accomplished by using tabulated values for the diamagnetism of atoms, ions, or whole molecules. These tabulated values can be problematic since many sources contain incomplete and conflicting data.…