The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift from traditional in-person teaching to remote and online learning, necessitating a more adaptable educational platform to serve the diverse needs of students. Transforming hands-on "wet lab" activities into virtual "dry lab" exercises can promote a more accessible and flexible…

Photonics is an emerging field of science and technology that is effective in providing sustainable and innovative solutions to twenty-first century problems. Science education includes topics related to light. However, photonics is not yet included in most school curricula as a subject within the domain of science and technology to be presented…

To address the disconnect and bridge the gap between mathematics and science education, we developed interdisciplinary lessons and real-world applications by integrating Algebra 1 and Biology in a collaborative cohort model. We aim to improve student engagement, knowledge transfer, and performance on assessments in both disciplines. The…

An ice hockey player can strike a puck at speeds up to about 45 m/s (100 mph) using a technique known as the slap shot. There is nothing unusual about the speed, since golf balls, tennis balls, and baseballs can also be projected at that speed or even higher. The unusual part is that the player strikes the ice before striking the puck, causing the…

The fundamental air cavity mode (A0) of a violin was investigated from the viewpoint of its dependence on the opening area and shape by using holed sheets of paper. The dependences of the frequency response of the A0 cavity mode on the shape, opening area, and orientation of the openings were observed. It was also demonstrated that the change of…

The 8 studs on a 2 × 4 Lego brick conveniently represent the outer shell of electrons for carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms. We used Lego bricks to model these atoms, which are then joined together to form molecules by following the Lewis octet rule. A variety of small biological molecules can be modeled in this way, such as most amino acids,…

This article seeks to make the case for the pursuit of a "better" explanation being a productive organizing framework for science teaching and learning. Underlying this position is the idea that this framework allows promoting, in a unified manner, facility with the scientific practice of constructing explanations, appreciation of its…

Upper level chemistry electives provide an opportunity to integrate modern interdisciplinary topics into the chemistry curriculum. One such elective is Food Chemistry, a course first taught as part of a Common Read program. The course has changed over time to incorporate activities designed to illustrate the connection between food and chemistry…

A simple model of parallel motion of two point charges and the subsequent analysis of the electromagnetic field transformation invariant quantity are considered. It is shown that ignoring the coupling of electric and magnetic fields, as is done in some introductory physics books, can lead to miscalculations of the force between moving charges.…

As undergraduate biology curricula increasingly aim to provide students with access to courses and experiences that engage them in the practices of science, tools are needed for instruction, evaluation, and research around student learning. One of the important skills for undergraduate biology students to master is the selection and creation of…

There is a long history of some students finding that the science instruction they receive in schools fails to address their deeply held concerns about the theory of evolution. Such concerns are principally religious, though there are also students with deeply held religious views who are perfectly comfortable with the theory of evolution. New…

Consider the fall of the apple that, by legend, hit Newton on the head. Instead of using this to introduce Newton's law of gravity, we will discuss the point of view that the fall of the apple was caused by a minuscule curvature of spacetime in the region surrounding Newton and the apple tree. We will calculate this curvature using concepts and…

The peak position of the spectral density for blackbody radiation is given by the Wien displacement law. Within introductory physics materials it is often stated, or implied through example, that the color of the light emitted from a blackbody, such as the Sun, can be ascertained from knowledge of the position of that peak in the spectral density.…

With the wide availability of strong neodymium magnets, the slow and stately fall of a magnet through a conducting pipe has become a favorite classroom demo for teaching electromagnetic induction, Newton's third law, and Lenz's law. Since Lenz's law is conceptually difficult for some students, several authors have used this demo to explore in…

In this paper we describe a simple alternative to the telephone book friction experiment, a classic demonstration where a small force (generated for example by the bending of the outer pages) is amplified by the large number of surfaces in contact, resulting in a huge maximum static friction force that has to be counterbalanced in order to…