Investigates student understanding of energy and momentum concepts in introductory physics by designing and administering a 25-item, multiple-choice test and conducting individual interviews. Indicates that most students have difficulty in qualitatively interpreting basic principles related to energy and momentum and in applying them in physical…

Teaching about forces provides a good opportunity to encourage children to start thinking about energy transfer. Children come into the classroom with a number of ideas about the nature of energy. These often become apparent when eliciting their ideas about forces, particularly when discussing "push" and "pull". In this article, the author…

The eyes are the most complex organs in the body. Children's eyes are still developing until they are around 8-9 years old; therefore it is important to check that they are working properly before it is too late to rectify any problems. So how do they work, and why do they sometimes go wrong? In this article, the author explains children's eye…

Literature on multivariable causal inference (MCI) and literature on scientific reasoning (SR) have proceeded almost entirely independently, although they in large part address the same phenomena. An effort is made to bring these paradigms into close enough alignment with one another to compare implications of the two lines of work and examine how…

How does artificial gravity affect the path of a thrown ball? This paper contrasts ball trajectories on the Little Prince's asteroid planet B-612 and Arthur C. Clarke's rotating-drum spacecraft of 2001, and demonstrates curve balls with multiple loops in the latter environment.

In these studies, a vegetable can containing fluid was swung as a pendulum by supporting its end-lips with a pair of knife edges. The motion was measured with a capacitive sensor and the logarithmic decrement in free decay was estimated from computer-collected records. Measurements performed with nine different homogeneous liquids, distributed…

Foucault's pendulum exhibition in 1851 occurred in an era now known by development of the theorems of Coriolis and the formulation of dynamical meteorology by Ferrel. Yet today the behavior of the pendulum is often misunderstood. The existence of a horizontal component of Newtonian gravitation is essential for understanding the behavior with…

Teaching Newtonian physics involves the replacement of students' ideas about physical situations with precise concepts appropriate for mathematical applications. This paper focuses on the concepts of "matter" and "mass". We suggest that students, like some pre-Newtonian scientists we examine, use these terms in a way that conflicts with their…

It is argued that Galileo made an important breakthrough in the methodology of science by considering idealized models of phenomena such as free fall, swinging pendula and the like, which can conflict with experience. The idealized models are constructs largely by our reasoning processes applied to the theoretical situation at hand. On this view,…

Piaget's investigations into children's understanding of the laws governing the movement of a simple pendulum were first reported in 1955 as part of a report into how children's knowledge of the physical world changes during development. Chapter 4 of Inhelder & Piaget (1955/1958) entitled "The Oscillation of a Pendulum and the Operations of…

G. S. Dell, K. D. Reed, D. R. Adams, and A. S. Meyer (2000) proposed a "breadth-of-constraint" continuum on phoneme errors, using artificial experiment-wide constraints to investigate a putative middle ground between local and language-wide constraints. The authors report 5 experiments that test the idea of the continuum and the location of the…

Physics teachers in secondary schools usually mention the world's largest particle physics laboratory--CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research)--only because of the enormous size of the accelerators and detectors used there, the number of scientists involved in their activities and also the necessary international scientific…

Making science relevant in students' learning is an important aspect of science education. This involves the ability to draw in examples from daily contexts to begin with the learning or to apply concepts learnt into familiar everyday phenomena that students observe and experience around them. Another important aspect of science education is the…

The purpose of this project was to develop a science-based course, "Environmental Sustainability Issues for Designers and Merchandisers". The course emphasis was on scientific concepts underlying textile-related environmental problems; the focus was on the "cradle to cradle" design model as an approach for eliminating environmental problems during…

Both science itself, and the human culture of which it is a part, would benefit from a story of science that encourages wider engagement with and participation in the processes of scientific exploration. Such a story, based on a close analysis of scientific method, is presented here. It is the story of science as story telling and story revising.…