Introductory calculus-based physics textbooks state that electromagnetic waves are transverse and list many of their properties, but most such textbooks do not bring forth arguments why this is so. Both physical and theoretical arguments are at a level appropriate for students of courses based on such books, and could be readily used by…

Given the commonness of pets in communities throughout the United States, Canada, and Australia, among other countries, pet stewardship should be a natural topic of study for the integration of science, mathematics, and technology. Therefore, the term "stewardship" will be examined by applying observation and research to shape our…

We investigate the interplay between mathematics and physics resources in intermediate mechanics students. In the mechanics course, the selection and application of coordinate systems is a consistent thread. At the University of Maine, students often start the course with a strong preference to use Cartesian coordinates, in accordance with their…

Reptiles and amphibians are a diverse and interesting group of organisms. The four activities described in this article take students' curiosity into the realm of scientific understanding. The activities involve the concepts of species identification; animal adaptations, communication, and habitat; and conservation. (Contains 1 table and 2…

This research involved naive physics learners who were interested in majoring in science or engineering. In a semester-long quasi-experimental study, open-ended pretests and weekly interviews were used to analyse the progressive development of students' conceptions relating to sound and wave motion. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted…

Compared to Ernst Mach's influence on the conceptual development of physics, his efforts to popularize science and his reflections on science literacy are known to a much lesser degree. The approach and the impact of Mach's popular scientific lectures are discussed in view of today's problems of understanding science. The key issues…

One of those who failed to establish himself as a natural philosopher in 18th century Paris was the future revolutionary Jean Paul Marat. He did not only publish several monographs on heat, optics and electricity in which he attempted to characterise his work as being purely empirical but he also tried to establish himself as a public lecturer.…

The bending of a laser beam in a medium with a density and refractive index gradient in the same direction has been described previously. When a transparent container is half filled with a salt or sugar solution and an equal amount of water is floated on top of it, then diffusion will create a concentration gradient from top to bottom. A laser…

Isaac Newton may have seen an apple fall, but it was Robert Hooke who had a better idea of where it would land. No one really knows whether or not Isaac Newton actually saw an apple fall in his garden. Supposedly it took place in 1666, but it was a tale he told in his old age more than 60 years later, a time when his memory was failing and his…

A uniform, flexible and frictionless chain falling link by link from a heap by the edge of a table falls with an acceleration g/3 if the motion is nonconservative, but g/2 if the motion is conservative, g being the acceleration due to gravity. Unable to construct such a falling chain, we use instead higher-dimensional versions of it. A home…

We present a short overview on the ideas of large extra dimensions and their implications for the possible production of micro black holes in the next generation particle accelerator at CERN (Geneva, Switzerland) from this year on. In fact, the possibility of black hole production on Earth is currently one of the most exciting predictions for the…

Universities are by their nature learning based organizations. They deliver knowledge to the students through teaching processes. Students acquire knowledge through learning processes, from their professors and from other different knowledge resources. Since learning is a fundamental process within any university, people may consider universities…

It has been suggested that the enterprise of developing mechanistic theories of the human cognitive architecture is flawed because the theories produced are not directly falsifiable. Newell attempted to sidestep this criticism by arguing for a Lakatosian model of scientific progress in which cognitive architectures should be understood as theories…

The study demonstrates the induction of one-dimensional standing waves, called "natural-harmonics" on a guitar to provide a unique tone. The analysis shows that a normally complex vibration is composed of a number of simple and discrete vibrations.

A new tool known as the NMR Mosaic is developed which can be successfully used at universities and colleges to interpret proton NMR.