After the success of a course on cryptography for a general audience, based on Simon Singh's "The Code Book" [49], I decided to try again and create a mathematics course for a general audience based on "The Physics of Star Trek" by Lawrence Krauss [32]. This article looks at the challenges of designing a physics-based mathematics course "from…

The aim of this study was to investigate whether physical or virtual manipulative experimentation can differentiate physics learning. There were four experimental conditions, namely Physical Manipulative Experimentation (PME), Virtual Manipulative Experimentation (VME), and two sequential combinations of PME and VME, as well as a control condition…

In the 1950s, Terman summarized the results of his longitudinal study of the gifted and compared the "life success" of the 150 most successful men (Group A) with the 150 least successful men (Group C) at the midpoint of their careers (age 30). The objective of this article is to replicate the original Terman work with a modern sample of the most…

Human anatomy in physical therapy programs is a basic science course serving as a foundation for subsequent clinical courses. Integration of anatomy with a clinical emphasis throughout a curriculum provides opportunities for reinforcement of previously learned material. Considering the human cadaver laboratory as a fixed cost to our program, we…

In this study, we examine introductory physics students' ability to perform analogical reasoning between two isomorphic problems which employ the same underlying physics principles but have different surface features. Three hundred sixty-two students from a calculus-based and an algebra-based introductory physics course were given a quiz in the…

Humphry (this issue) has written a thought-provoking piece on the interpretation of item discrimination parameters as scale units in item response theory. One of the key features of his work is the description of an item response theory (IRT) model that he calls the logistic measurement function that combines aspects of two traditions in IRT that…

Behavioral scientists have struggled with units of measurement for as long as they have struggled with measurement itself. Psychology's sole attempt at an explicit unit of measurement--the Lexile Framework for Reading (Stenner, Burdick, Sanford, & Burdick, 2006)--has been and continues to be ignored by the psychometric "cognoscenti."…

The purpose of this article is to examine the role of the unit in physics in order to clarify the role of the unit in psychometrics. Based on this examination, metrological conventions are used to formulate the relationship between discrimination and the unit of a scale in item response theory. Seminal literature in two lines of item response…

This article presents Stephen Humphry's response to the commentaries for his article "The Role of the Unit in Physics and Psychometrics." The commentaries covered a range of important considerations and implications. Given that the author fully agrees with the majority of the content, attention will be confined mainly to points that call…

Problem-based learning (PBL) is widely endorsed as a desirable learning method, particularly in science. Especially in light of the method's heavy demand on resources, evidence-based practice is called for. Rigorous studies of the method's effectiveness, however, are scarce. In Study 1, college students enrolled in an elementary physics course…

Science instruction literature provides us with goals for laboratory instruction and guidelines for designing and implementing science labs in the post-secondary setting. How well are we doing in our attempt to provide a meaningful and positive learning experience for our students? This paper describes the results of a study to determine whether…

In 1907, Einstein described a "Gedankenexperiment" in which he showed that free fall in a gravitational field is indistinguishable from a body at rest in an elevator accelerated upwards in zero gravity. This paper describes an apparatus, which is simple to make and simple to operate, that acts as an observable footnote to Einstein's example. It…

The energy levels of the helium atom and isoelectronic ions in two dimensions are considered. The difficulties encountered in the analytical evaluation of the perturbative and variational expressions for the ground state, promote an interesting factorization of the inter-electronic interaction, leading to simple expressions for the energy. This…

Representations of centrifugal forces are derived in a variety of rotating frames. Although the rotating angle of a point mass relative to an inertial frame is often confused with the rotating angle of a rotating frame relative to the inertial frame, they should be differentiated. (Contains 4 figures and 1 table.)

An understanding of mechanical waves is a pre-requisite for the study of many topics in advanced physics, and indeed in many other disciplines. There have been many research studies in mechanical waves, all of which have revealed that students have trouble with the basic concepts. Therefore, in order for teachers to prepare appropriate instruction…