Poetry writing in the context of physics is a student-centered activity that enables students to view the world through the window of physics and make connections to everyday life scenarios. Poetry assignments provide a creative and atypical challenge to students, creating more student-centered class discussions and a fun, light-hearted approach…

In a recent paper, Zable described an experiment with a near-spherical balloon filled with impure helium. Measuring the temperature and the pressure inside and outside the balloon, the lift of the balloon, and the mass of the balloon materials, he described how to use the ideal gas laws and Archimedes' principal to compute the average molecular…

Atwood's machine is used in countless introductory physics classes as an illustration of Newton's second law. Initially, the analysis is performed assuming the pulley and string are massless and the axle is frictionless. Although the mass of the pulley is often included when the problem is revisited later in the context of rotational dynamics, the…

With real particle collision data available on the web, the amazing dynamics of the fundamental particles of the standard model can be explored in classrooms. Complementing the events from the ATLAS experiment with animations of the fundamental processes on the quark and gluon level makes it possible to better understand the invisible world of…

At a large, diverse, hispanic-serving, master's-granting university, the Alma Project was created to support the rich connections of life experiences of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students that come from racially diverse backgrounds through reflective journaling. Utilizing frameworks in ethnic studies and social…

For many years the need to educate and support our teachers to implement science and mathematics education has been ongoing throughout the world (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2019; Mundry et al., 2009). In more recent years, this call has extended to include teaching through integrated science, technology,…

Variations of Galileo's famous track experiments in acceleration are commonly performed in high school and college. The purpose of this article is to present a sequence of three low-tech basic kinematics experiments using Galilean tracks that can be set up extremely quickly and yet generally yield excellent results. A low-cost construction method…

Conceptual Change is a widely accepted theoretical framework for science education. Setting up successful learning and teaching arrangements in this framework necessarily entails including students´ preconceptions into the construction of those arrangements. In order to provide a basis for such arrangements this study investigated and explored…

This paper is based on work done at IdeaSquare, a new innovation experiment at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The paper explores the translation of fundamental research into societal applications with the help of multidisciplinary student teams, project- and problem-based learning and design thinking methods. The theme is…

The importance of understanding and internalizing the scientific method can hardly be exaggerated. Unfortunately, it is all too common for high school--and even university--students to graduate with only a partial or oversimplified understanding of what the scientific method is and how to actually employ it. Help in remedying this situation may…

In the modern physics unit included in the course curriculum of grade 10 physics introduced in the 2007-2008 education year, the aim is that students at this grade level are aware of any developments which constitute modern physics and may be considered new, and interpret whether mass, length and time values of the motions at any velocities close…

Undergraduate physics laboratories seldom have experiments that measure the Coriolis acceleration. This has traditionally been the case owing to the inherent complexities of making such measurements. Articles on the experimental determination of the Coriolis acceleration are few and far between in the physics literature. However, because modern…

Students must learn effective problem solving strategies in order to develop expertise in physics. Effective problem solving strategies include a conceptual analysis of the problem followed by planning of the solution, and then implementation, evaluation, and reflection upon the process. Research suggests that converting a problem from the initial…

What responsibility do science teacher educators have for engaging students in learning about global climate change in courses? How can the topic of global climate change be added to an already packed course curriculum? The authors have begun assembling instructional resources and learning ways others have incorporated global climate change in…

Characterizing how students construct causal mechanistic explanations for chemical phenomena can provide us with important insights into the ways that students develop understanding of chemistry concepts. Here, we present two qualitative studies of undergraduate general chemistry students' reasoning about the causes of London dispersion forces in…