In this paper we will examine the persistence of "misconceptions." We used data from a longitudinal study of personal ideas in 24 students' thinking about ecological processes. The results show students often speaking about personal experiences dating from an early age, to which they had also referred in similar interviews conducted years before.…

In this article, the author discusses a tornado-producing machine that he used in teacher-led, student assisted demonstrations in order to reinforce concepts learned during a unit on weather. The machine, or simulator, was powered by a hair dryer, fan, and cool-mist humidifier. The machine consists of a demonstration table containing a plenum box,…

A very simple strategy for the solution of the Schrodinger equation of a particle moving in one dimension subjected to a generic potential is presented. This strategy is implemented in a computer program called Kmonodium, which is free and distributed under the General Public License (GPL).

The author presents a theory of career development drawing on nonlinear dynamics and chaos and complexity theories. Career is presented as a complex adaptive entity, a fractal of the human entity. Characteristics of complex adaptive entities, including (a) autopiesis, or self-regeneration; (b) open exchange; (c) participation in networks; (d)…

We propose, as a special way to explore the physics of flying objects, to use a flight simulator with a personalized scenery to reproduce the territory where students live. This approach increases the participation and attention of students to physics classes but also creates several opportunities for addressing side activities and arguments of…

The Beijing University personnel reform has taken a substantive step. Director Zhou Yueming of the Beijing University Personnel Department confirmed the Beida Personnel Department issued a notice over the Beida campus Web site (www.pku.edu.cn) announcing the public recruitment of professors. Ninety-five professorial positions are anticipating…

The purpose of this paper is to carefully examine the evolution of students' theory building and modeling, critical components of scientific epistemologies, over a unit of study on sinking and floating in one third/fourth grade classroom. The study described in this paper follows in the tradition of Design Experiments (Brown 1992, Collins 1990)…

Interviews university students in modern physics about their understanding of three fundamental experiments. Explores their development of models of microscopic processes. Uses interactive demonstrations to probe student understanding of modern physics experiments in two high school physics classes. Analyzes the nature of students' models and the…

The study we present tries to explore how first year engineering students formulate hypotheses in order to construct their own problem solving structure when confronted with problems in physics. Under the constructivistic perspective of the teaching-learning process, the formulation of hypotheses plays a key role in contrasting the coherence of…

The different and contrasting versions of the etymology of the term "electricity" in Modern Greek textbooks of Physics of the 18th and 19th century, which are influenced by French and German textbooks, are not mere (re)constructions that serve the didactic purposes and objectives of their authors. They are (in)directly related to the social and…

Violins, earthquakes, and the "singing rod" demonstration all have something in common--stick-slip frictional motion. The application of stick-slip friction can be extended to a ringing wineglass, exotic percussion instruments, car racing, and the latest research on the interplay between surfaces at the atomic level. These examples all involve two…

We report on an investigation of students' ideas about gravity after a semester of instruction in physics at university. There are two aspects to the study which was concerned with students' answers to a carefully designed qualitative examination question on gravity. The first aspect is a classification of the answers and a comparative study of…

This research introduces a new naive physics belief, the Galileo bias, whereby people ignore air resistance and falsely believe that all objects fall at the same rate. Survey results revealed that this bias is held by many and is surprisingly strongest for those with formal physics instruction. In 2 experiments, 98 participants dropped ball pairs…

The unquestionably central role of physics in the development of scientific literacy is undermined by its perceived difficulty. An investigation of high school students' use of the concepts of momentum and force suggests that, in the case of mechanics, the reason for physics' unpopularity and image as a "hard" subject is largely due to an…

The House of Science in Stockholm is a university science laboratory for physics, astronomy and biotechnology, entirely devoted to schools. The laboratory makes modern science accessible to teachers, school classes and individual students. It could serve as a model for universities and science centres that want to bridge the gap between school and…