Although the theory that creativity requires blind variation and selective retention (BVSR) is now more than a half-century old, only recently has BVSR theory undergone appreciable conceptual development, including formal three-parameter definitions of both creativity and sightedness. In this article, these new developments are for the first time…

Prismatic refraction is a classic topic in science education. To investigate how undergraduate students think about prismatic dispersion, and to see how they change their thinking when observing dispersed images, five teaching experiments were done and analysed according to the Model of Educational Reconstruction. For projection through a prism,…

The purpose of this study is to determine the views of social studies of teacher candidates about light pollution. This research is designed by using qualitative research method. In the research, case studies--that is one of the qualitative research methods--is used. Case study is a kind of research that offers a rich perspective on analyzing the…

The aim of the present article is to focus on the operational aspects referring to the actions--strategies and on the defined modalities of establishing educational objectives/competences. In the achievement of our work a special attention has been paid to the operational aspects of the learning process of the optical phenomena. There were carried…

This research documents the aims and the impact of a teaching experiment on how the absorption of light depends on the thickness of the absorbing medium. This teaching experiment is more specifically characterized as bringing to bear a "concept-driven interactive pathway". It is designed to make students analyse the absorption of light…

An inexpensive light board projection system that enables lecturers to face the classroom while lecturing is described. The lecturer's writing appears in high contrast in front of the lecturer; it is never blocked by the lecturer, even while writing. The projected image displays both the writing as well as the lecturer's gestures and facial…

This paper presents an experimental activity based on the absorption of light colours by pigments. The activity is constructed using a stepwise design and offers an opportunity for students and teachers to compare and generalize the interactions between light and pigment colours. The light colours composing an artificial rainbow produced in the…

Human eye optics is a common high school physics topic and students usually show a great interest during our presentation of this theme. In this article, we present an easy way to estimate a diverging lens' optical power from a simple experiment involving myopia eyeglasses and a smartphone flashlight.

Global warming is a current environmental issue that has been linked to an increase in anthropogenic carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. To raise awareness of the problem, various simple experiments have been proposed to demonstrate the effect of carbon dioxide on the planet's temperature. This article describes a similar experiment, which…

Almost everyone "knows" that steam is visible. After all, one can see the cloud of white issuing from the spout of a boiling tea kettle. In reality, steam is the gaseous phase of water and is invisible. What you see is light scattered from the tiny droplets of water that are the result of the condensation of the steam as its temperature…

According to Koffka (1935), the lightness of a target surface is determined by the relationship between the target and the illumination frame of reference to which it belongs. However, each scene contains numerous illumination frames, and judging each one separately would lead to an enormous amount of computing. Grouping those frames that are in…

A container was placed on top of a piece of white paper, and a pin positioned so that it vertically touched an outside wall of the container. Students were asked to predict the image of the pin when it was observed from the top of the container. Two scenarios of either an empty container or a container completely filled with water were considered…

Movies are mostly viewed for entertainment. Mixing entertainment and physics gets students excited as we look at a famous movie scene from a different point of view. The following is a link to a fragment from the 2010 motion picture "Inception": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3tBBhYJeAw. The following problem, based on images in facing…

The "atoms first" philosophy, adopted by a growing number of General Chemistry textbook authors, places greater emphasis on atomic structure as a key to a deeper understanding of the field of chemistry. A pivotal concept needed to understand the behavior of atoms is the restriction of an atom's energy to specific allowed values. However,…

The inverse-square law for the intensity of light received at a distance from a light source has been verified using various experimental techniques. Typical measurements involve a manual variation of the distance between a light source and a light sensor, usually by sliding the sensor or source along a bench, measuring the source-sensor distance…