Physics and chemistry students learn several methods to determine the density of materials. While measuring the mass of materials is usually simple, volume measurements are more complex. For simple shapes the volume may be determined by measuring its geometry; for more complex shapes students often use Archimedes' principle. However, neither of…

According to Newtonian mechanics, the gravitational fields created by bodies with spherical symmetry (such as planets) are non-uniform. This may create the impression to undergraduate physics students that uniform gravitational fields are just an approximation. This is not the case as uniform gravitational fields are created in hollows of…

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduate and doctoral programs experience consistently high attrition rates. Moreover, persistent disparities exist in gender and racial representation. Students from historically excluded backgrounds have lower retention rates than white and Asian American students. To date, little work has…

Momentum is a foundational concept in physics. Although it is often taught in introductory mechanics courses, there are a limited number of studies on this topic in the literature. The results from these studies have consistently shown that students have difficulties in understanding momentum, especially the connections between net force, time,…

Archimedes' principle states the buoyant force is equal to the weight of fluid displaced by the object. In this work, we will develop this principle using energy considerations.

The discovery of nuclear fission was one of the most dramatic scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century. Within a few years, the fantastic energy latent in the nuclei of atoms would be powering reactors and bombs, a development that fundamentally changed the relationship between physics and human affairs. To drive home the magnitude of this…

A well-known conclusion from elementary ballistic trajectory analysis is that the horizontal range of a projectile is maximized for a launch angle of 45°. The derivation of this result assumes that the launch speed is the same for all possible launch angles, but this neglects the fact that the work done against gravity by the launching mechanism…

Lissajous figures, and other harmonic curves, straddle the line between physics and art. The sight of a harmonograph tracing out its curves in the Amherst College physics library in 1957 was certainly one of the things that drew young Tom Greenslade into physics and inspired a career-long appreciation of them.

Newton married her, Einstein eloped with her, and many a physicist fell head over heels for her beauty, charm, and heavenly elegance! This paper is a heartfelt personal attempt to make sense of the indescribable love many physicists have for their subject matter, physics. My muse's nickname is Feezya and this is how she shall be referred to for…

This is a fundamental and pedagogical work in quantum physics/chemistry, where we try to illustrate the Mulliken's question, "What are the electrons really doing in molecules?". And we also briefly review the development of the most popular numerical approaches in computational chemistry. We examine in a novel approach, how we can…

From ancient times, the different features of planets and moons have created a huge interest. Aristarchus was one of the first to study the relative relations among Earth, Moon, and Sun. This interest has remained until today, and therefore it is always relevant to make this knowledge more appealing to the younger generations. Nowadays, smartphone…

Experiment is understood as a core activity in science education as well as science in general. Despite many efforts to improve science education in the laboratory, a cookbook style of verification experiments often dominate school science. In this study, we conducted an open laboratory activity that provided students with an opportunity to think…

This study explored how scientific ideas interacted in college students' scientific explanations using text analysis techniques and network analysis. A task was given to first-year college students asking them to answer a series of physics questions associated with a computer simulation. Students' written responses were classified into three…

A phone emitting sound of a fixed frequency is sliding on an inclined plane and approaching a second phone kept at the bottom of the plane. The detected frequency versus time data by the second phone are used to calculate the acceleration of the sliding phone. The primary objective of this paper is to calculate the sliding friction between the…

As students learn physics, they are often required to reason about the behavior of macroscopic and microscopic phenomena, and to synthesize prior knowledge from several different areas of physics to construct understanding of new ideas. This can be a tremendously difficult cognitive task for novice students, especially when the unfamiliar…