This paper addresses the difficulties experienced by first-grade students studying rigid body motion at Sofia University. Most quantities describing the rigid body are in relations that the students find hard to visualize and understand. They also lose the notion of cause-result relations between vector quantities, such as the relation between…

The trajectories of the molecules in an ideal gas and of the ball in a soccer game are compared. The great difference between these motions and some similarities are discussed. This example could be suitable for discussing many concepts in kinetic theory in a way that can be pictured by students for getting a more intuitive understanding. It could…

A simple rocket can be made using a plastic bottle filled with a volume of water and pressurized air. When opened, the air pressure pushes the water out of the bottle. This causes an increase in the bottle momentum so that it can be propelled to fairly long distances or heights. Water rockets are widely used as an educational activity, and several…

It has been suggested that human behavior in general and cognitive performance in particular emerge from coordination between multiple temporal scales. In this article, we provide quantitative support for such a theory of interaction-dominant dynamics in human cognition by using wavelet-based multifractal analysis and accompanying multiplicative…

We present a teaching module dealing with the thermal effects of interaction between radiation and matter, the infrared emission of bodies and the greenhouse effect devoted to university level and teacher education. The module stresses the dependence of the optical properties of materials (transparency, absorptivity and emissivity) on radiation…

This paper enlarges the reservoir of solved tutor problems in non-holonomic mechanics at the undergraduate level of physics education. Unlike other, rather artificial, solved problems typically used, the streetboard-rider locomotion problem presented here represents an appealing contemporary real-world problem with interesting applications in a…

The authors aimed to propose a valid and reliable diagnostic instrument by developing a three-tier test on simple electric circuits. Based on findings from the interviews, open-ended questions, and the related literature, the test was developed and administered to 124 high school students. In addition to some qualitative techniques for…

This article describes workshops for high school physics teachers in Uganda on inquiry-based teaching and PhET simulations. I hope it increases awareness of the conditions teachers face in developing countries and inspires others to give similar workshops. This work demonstrates what is possible with some concerted, but not extraordinary, effort.

When illuminating four "mystery" vials of nanoparticle solution with a 405-nm light emitting diode (LED), four distinct colors related to the peak wavelength of fluorescent emission can be observed. This phenomenon perplexes high school physics students and leads to the subsequent exploratory question, "Why are the four vials emitting a different…

A model proposed by Rioux to explain Hund's rule is investigated. Although the largest contribution to the singlet-triplet splitting in the two-electron atomic systems is the nuclear attraction term, this arises from different optimum scale factors in the two states and that difference is driven by the electron-electron exchange term. The…

The author introduces an emerging worldview that could affect counseling concepts and methods greatly in the relatively near future. The worldview, dynamicalism, incorporates essential features of modernism and postmodernism. It also incorporates cutting-edge concepts from physics and philosophy. The synthesis of these ideas provides a conceptual…

Albert Einstein had famously said that Nature is subtle but not malicious. He should know better because he had unravelled some of the secrets of Nature at a relatively young age as an obscure patent clerk working in isolation. This paper tells of stories of other scientists who had also made ground-breaking discoveries in forced or self-imposed…

Our goal here is to determine the spatial and temporal constraints on communication between two observers at least one of which moves with constant proper acceleration in two-dimensional Minkowski spacetime. We take as a simplified model of communication one observer bouncing a light signal off another observer. Our derivations use only elementary…

"It was helpful to keep track of questions we had at the beginning so we knew what we were trying to find out." With these words, a student described the value of using a Driving Question Board (DQB) in a project-based science (PBS) unit. This instructional tool is designed to support inquiry and project-based learning by organizing and focusing…

An interstellar Bussard ramjet is a spaceship using the protons of the interstellar medium in a fusion engine to produce thrust. In recent papers, it was shown that the relativistic equation of motion of an ideal ramjet and that of a ramjet with radiation loss are analytical. When a mass loss appears, the limit speed of the ramjet is more strongly…