The idea of using a dice game to simulate radioactive decay is not new. However, modern pedagogy encourages, if not requires, us to provide multiple representations and visualizations for our students. The advantage of interactive engagement methods also has been made clear. Here we describe a highly visual and interactive use of dice to develop…

There have been two articles in this journal that described a pair of collision carts used to demonstrate vividly the difference between elastic and inelastic collisions. One cart had a series of washers that were mounted rigidly on a rigid wooden framework, the other had washers mounted on rubber bands stretched across a framework. The rigidly…

Comparing the predicted and actual rolls of combinations of both two and three dice can help to introduce many of the basic concepts of statistical thermodynamics, including multiplicity, probability, microstates, and macrostates, and demonstrate that entropy is indeed a measure of randomness, that disordered states (those of higher entropy) are…

The measurement of the mass, or the density, of air can easily be done with very simple materials and offers many interesting phenomena for discussion--buoyancy and its effects being the most obvious but not the only one. Many interesting considerations can be done regarding the behavior of gases, the effect of the external conditions in the…

Individuals are at an increased risk to drop out of the STEM pipeline if they are female or Latino, and during certain periods including high school. Families are a potential untapped resource of support for high school students. Based on the expectancy-value model, we examined if a variety of parental behaviors predicted students' ability…

Recent scholarship on secondary reading calls for a shift from teaching generic literacy strategies to teaching discipline-specific language and literacy practices (Fang & Schleppegrell, 2008; Moje, 2008; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2012). This call for disciplinary literacy instruction (DLI) reflects the growing recognition that literacy…

Nanoscience offers fascinating opportunities for science education as it links the achievements of modern technology to traditional models of science. In this article we present a nanotechnology orientated lesson on oscillations, suitable for physics courses at high schools and universities. The focus of the lesson is in forced oscillations on a…

The Poynting vector is an invaluable tool for analysing electromagnetic problems. However, even a rigorous stress-energy tensor approach can still leave us with the question: is it best defined as E x H or as D x B? Typical electromagnetic treatments provide yet another perspective: they regard E x B as the appropriate definition, because E and B…

We describe an experiment which enables the observation of longitudinal magnification for the real image of a three-dimensional (3D) object formed by a converging lens. The experiment also shows the absence of longitudinal inversion. Possible reasons for misconceptions with respect to real images and longitudinal inversions are discussed and a…

The authors studied the trajectories of the hand and of the tip of a handheld sliding first-order lever in aiming movements. With this kind of tool, straight trajectories of the hand are generally associated with curved trajectories of the tip of the lever and vice versa. Trajectories of the tip of the lever exhibited smaller deviations from…

A proper First Law energy balance of the soybean biodiesel cycle shows that the overall efficiency of biodiesel production is 0.18, i.e., only 1 in 5 parts of the solar energy sequestered as soya beans, plus the fossil energy inputs, becomes biodiesel. Soybean meal is produced with an overall energetic efficiency of 0.38, but it is not a fossil…

Active learning is individual and group participation in effective activities such as in-class observing, writing, experimenting, discussion, solving problems, and talking about to-be-learned topics. Some instructors believe that active learning is impossible, or at least extremely difficult to achieve in large lecture sessions. Nevertheless, the…

Of the eight practices of science identified in "A Framework for K-12 Science Education" (NRC 2012), helping students develop and use models has been identified by many as an anchor (Schwarz and Passmore 2012; Windschitl 2012). In instruction, disciplinary core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and scientific practices can be meaningfully…

Physics teachers use experimental devices to show students how scientific concepts, principles, and laws are applied to understand the real world. This paper studies question generation of secondary and under-graduate university students when they are confronted with experimental devices in different but usual teaching situations: reading about…

Israel suffers from a growing problem of socio-economic gaps between those who live in the center of the country and residents of outlying areas. As a result, there is a low level of accessibility to higher education among the peripheral population. The goal of the Sidney Warren Science Education Center for Youth at Tel-Hai College is to…