Previous studies reported impaired visual information processing in patients with fragile x syndrome and in premutation carriers. In this study, we assessed the perception of biological motion (a walking point-light character) and mechanical motion (a rotating shape) in 25 female fragile x premutation carriers and in 20 healthy non-carrier…

Informal education in museums is structured through movement in space. This article summarizes a range of research that examines the role of spatial layout in shaping the ways in which visitors explore, engage, and understand museums and museum exhibitions. It is demonstrated that behavior patterns are systematically linked to spatial…

Virtually all current physical education curriculum guides and textbooks include sections on learner outcomes based on the national standards for physical education, which often refer to gymnastics skills. Gymnastics is a perfect venue for teaching movement concepts, developing and maintaining overall body fitness, fostering personal and social…

It is well known that languages differ in how they encode motion. Languages such as English use verbs that communicate the manner of motion (e.g., "slide", "skip"), while languages such as Greek regularly encode motion paths in verbs (e.g., "enter", "ascend"). Here we ask how such cross-linguistic encoding…

We investigated whether phonological deficits are a consequence of magnocellular processing deficits in dyslexic and control children. In Experiment 1, children were tested for reading ability, phonological awareness, visuo-magnocellular motion perception, and attention shifting (sometimes considered as magnocellular function). A two-step cluster…

Children move the instant they are born and the moment they wake up every morning. Moving is one of the first and most important ways infants and toddlers explore and learn about the world, and this process continues as they grow and develop. Research shows that movement and exercise can spark the growth of new brain cells and facilitate learning…

A constrained elastic pendulum is proposed as a simple mechanical model for the isotropic harmonic oscillator. The conceptual and mathematical simplicity of this model recommends it as an effective pedagogical tool in teaching basic physics concepts at advanced high school and introductory undergraduate course levels. (Contains 2 figures.)

Changing mass phenomena like the motion of a falling chain, the behaviour of a falling elastic bar or spring, and the motion of a bungee jumper surprise many a physicist. In this article we discuss the first phase of bungee jumping, when the bungee jumper falls, but the bungee rope is still slack. In instructional material this phase is often…

This work tries to elicit the "meanings" that undergraduate physics students attach to the term "relativity". The domain of investigation is restricted to Galilean relativity of Newtonian mechanics. Our methodology is primarily qualitative: we first obtain students' responses through a questionnaire, follow it up by a 3h…

We present an elementary method to obtain the equations of the shallow-water solitary waves in different orders of approximation. The first two of these equations are solved to get the shapes and propagation velocities of the corresponding solitary waves. The first-order equation is shown to be equivalent to the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation,…

Exposure to novel contexts produce heightened states of arousal and biochemical changes in the brain to consolidate memory. However, processes permitting simple exposure to unfamiliar contexts to elevate sympathetic output and to improve memory are poorly understood. This shortcoming was addressed by examining how novelty-induced changes in…

Arm swing in human walking is an active natural motion involving the upper extremities. Earlier studies have described the interrelationship between arms and legs during walking, but the effect of arm swing on energy expenditure and dynamic parameters during normal gait, is inconclusive. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of…

Projectile motion is usually the first non-uniform two-dimensional motion that students will encounter in a pre-university physics course. In this article, we introduce a novel technique for capturing the trajectory of projectile motion on an inclined Perspex plane. This is achieved by coating the Perspex with a thin layer of fine water droplets…

Why are snakes such a common target of fear? One current view is that snake fear is one of several innate fears that emerge spontaneously. Another is that humans have an evolved predisposition to learn to fear snakes. In the first study reported here, 9- to 10-month-old infants showed no differential spontaneous reaction to films of snakes versus…

The Jacobi and Weierstrass elliptic functions used to be part of the standard mathematical arsenal of physics students. They appear as solutions of many important problems in classical mechanics: the motion of a planar pendulum (Jacobi), the motion of a force-free asymmetric top (Jacobi), the motion of a spherical pendulum (Weierstrass) and the…