A critical challenge in urban science education is determining how to provide empowering science learning experiences for all students. In an effort to address the achievement gap in science education, I have focused on the concept of ownership, specifically when and how students gain ownership in science learning. This paper presents a teacher…

We conducted a laboratory-based randomized control study to examine the effectiveness of inquiry-based instruction. We also disaggregated the data by student demographic variables to examine if inquiry can provide equitable opportunities to learn. Fifty-eight students aged 14-16 years old were randomly assigned to one of two groups. Both groups of…

An outcome of science education is that young people have the understandings and skills to participate in public debate and make informed decisions about science issues that influence their lives. Toulmin's argumentation skills are emerging as an effective strategy to enhance the quality of evidence based decision making in science classrooms. In…

The idea of teaching physics to ninth-graders, known as "Physics First," has become more and more popular among physics educators in this country. However, introducing ninth-grade physics has been an uphill battle; such a change has a major impact on the students, parents, teachers, and the school administration. Switching to Physics First affects…

Despite reports to the contrary, the availability of physics as a course for high school students is not equitably distributed throughout the United States. While some schools provide physics for all who wish to take it, a more common scenario is limited availability, often open only to the few students who have completed the necessary…

Many high school and introductory college physics instructors ponder the choice between "open text" exams versus "facts and formulae sheet" exams. Other alternatives are closed book/closed notes exams or an instructor-prepared sheet of facts and relevant formulas. There is no agreement on merit. Rehfuss strongly opposes allowing students to use…

Reflection of light from a plane mirror in uniform rectilinear motion is a century-old problem, intimately related to the foundations of special relativity. The problem was first investigated by Einstein in his famous 1905 paper by using the Lorentz transformations to switch from the mirror's rest frame to the frame where the mirror moves at a…

Like many high school and college physics teachers, I have found playing vector games to be a useful way of illustrating the concepts of inertia, velocity, and acceleration. Like many, I have also had difficulty in trying to get students to understand Newton's law of universal gravitation, specifically the inverse-square law and its application to…

In this paper we describe a teaching approach focusing on modelling in physics, emphasizing scientific reasoning based on empirical data and using the notion of multiple representations of physical phenomena as a framework. We describe modelling activities from a project (PHYS 21) and relate some experiences from implementation of the modelling…

Film has been used to detect x-rays since the early days of their discovery by Rontgen. Although nowadays superseded by other techniques, film still provides a cheap means of x-ray detection, making it attractive in high-school or undergraduate university courses. If some sort of quantitative result is required, the film's optical absorbance or…

As you have read in the previous "After the Bell" column, water harvesting is a process of diverting and collecting rainwater. One of the main reasons to harvest rainwater is to reduce the demand on local sources of water. The objective of the harvesting procedure is to gather water from a weather event that is usually lost as runoff and either…

This article describes laboratory activity that examines the chemical process of smoking and the components of smoke, of both cigarettes and water pipes (narghiles also known as "hookah"). The aim of this activity is to expose adolescents to the scientific aspects of smoking; and to present the relevance of chemistry in everyday life. (Contains 3…

A simple procedure for determining the zinc composition of U.S. pennies is described. The penny zinc core is dissolved in acid and the evolved hydrogen gas is collected by water displacement.

This article presents an activity that uses sandwich bags to represent an individual's genome (their genetic make-up), and two variations of various objects representing the alleles of various genes. This activity includes the major components of an introductory genetics unit: from gamete production through probabilities of expected offspring…

An educational set-up for cosmic ray physics experiments is described. The detector is based on scintillator tiles with a readout through metal resistor semiconductor (MRS) avalanche photo diode (APD) arrays. Typical measurements of the cosmic angular distribution at sea level and a study of the East-West asymmetry obtained by such a device are…