Feedback on part I of this series (Ho "et al" 2009 "Phys. Educ." 44 253) motivated us to make hitting the target more interesting with a simple innovation: changing the target to a ring shaped hoop or goalpost and shooting for it in the "air", as if playing basketball on the inclined plane. We discuss in detail the…

During perception, people segment continuous activity into discrete events. They do so in part by monitoring changes in features of an ongoing activity. Characterizing these features is important for theories of event perception and may be helpful for designing information systems. The three experiments reported here asked whether the body…

This paper describes my attempts to look deeper into the so-called "shoot for your grade" labs, started in the '90s, when I began applying my teaching experience in Russia to introductory physics labs at the College of Charleston and other higher education institutions in South Carolina. The term "shoot for your grade" became popular among…

On Aug. 7, 2007, Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants was at bat waiting for a 3-2 pitch from Mike Bacsik of the Washington Nationals. The ball left the pitcher's hand at 84.7 mph and arrived at home plate traveling 77.2 mph. It was within 0.2 in of the center of home plate and 3.213 ft above the ground when Bonds swung and hit his 756th home…

The Lorentz velocity addition formula for one-dimensional motion presents a number of problems for beginning students of special relativity. In this paper we suggest a simple rewrite of the formula that is easier for students to memorize and manipulate, and furthermore is more intuitive in understanding the correction necessary when adding…

During the session on "Introductory College Physics Textbooks" at the 2007 Summer Meeting of the AAPT, there was a brief discussion about whether introductory physics should begin with one-dimensional motion or two-dimensional motion. Here we present the case that by starting with two-dimensional motion, we are able to introduce a considerable…

This note gives the solution to the motion of a perfectly hard ball that was launched against a perfectly hard inclined plane. The solution comprises recurrent formulas that give the parts of the trajectory between the impacts, which are parabolas. In the upward part of the motion, the parabolas become higher and narrower, in the downward part…

Albatrosses have evolved to soar and glide efficiently. By maximizing their lift-to-drag ratio "L/D", albatrosses can gain energy from the wind and can travel long distances with little effort. We simplify the difficult aerodynamic equations of motion by assuming that albatrosses maintain a constant "L/D". Analytic solutions to the simplified…

Previous psychophysical studies have shown that the adult human visual system makes use of form information such as occlusion to determine whether to integrate or segregate local motion signals (J. McDermott, Y. Weiss, & E. H. Adelson, 2001). Using the displays developed by McDermott et al., these experiments examined whether occlusion and amodal…

M. J. Spivey, M. Grosjean, and G. Knoblich (2005) showed that in a phonological competitor task, participants' mouse cursor movements showed more curvature toward the competitor item when the competitor and target were phonologically similar than when the competitor and target were phonologically dissimilar. Spivey et al. interpreted this result…

Instructors of physics often use examples to illustrate new or complex physical concepts to students. For any particular concept, there are an infinite number of examples, thus presenting instructors with a difficult question whenever they wish to use one in their teaching: which example will most effectively illustrate the concept so that student…

The simple pendulum has long been used to measure "g", the acceleration due to gravity, with a precision of a few percent. Achieving agreement with the accepted value of less than 1% is feasible in the high school laboratory, though it requires some care. The precision of the measurement is bound by how accurately the period and the pendulum…

What role does language play during attention allocation in perceiving and remembering events? We recorded adults' eye movements as they studied animated motion events for a later recognition task. We compared native speakers of two languages that use different means of expressing motion (Greek and English). In Experiment 1, eye movements revealed…

Behne, Carpenter, Call, and Tomasello (2005) showed that 9- to 18-month-olds, but not 6-month-olds, differentiated between people who were unwilling and unable to share toys. As the outcome of the two tasks is the same (i.e., the toy is not shared), the infants must respond to the different goals of the actor. However, visual habituation paradigms…

Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of static images that creates the illusion of movement. This optical illusion is often called perception of motion, persistence of vision, illusion of motion, or short-range apparent motion. The phenomenon occurs when the eye is exposed to rapidly changing still images, with each image being changed…