The reaction time of a group of students majoring in physics is reported here. Strong correlation between fatigue, reaction time and performance has been observed and may be useful for academicians and administrators responsible for working out timetables, course structures, student counsellings, etc. (Contains 5 figures, 1 table, and 1 footnote.)

Interactive computer simulations with complex representations and sophisticated graphics are a relatively new addition to the classroom, and research in this area is limited. We have conducted over 275 individual student interviews during which the students described what they were thinking as they interacted with simulations. These interviews…

A recent reform in the Portuguese secondary school curriculum reintroduced the study of capacitors. Thus we decided to implement some experimental activities on this subject with our undergraduate students in physics education courses. A recent announcement of a new kind of capacitor being developed by a team of scientists at Massachusetts…

In a study to assess how effectively undergraduate physics studies have prepared students for the workplace, we attempted to locate and interview traditional 3-year or 4-year physics students who had graduated in the past five years (2000 to 2004), and the employers of these graduates. The study was limited to recent graduates who have majored in…

A cheap replica of the verge-and-foliot clock has been built from simple materials. It is a didactic tool of great power for physics teaching at every stage of schooling, in particular at university level. An account is given of its construction and its working principles, together with motivated examples of a few activities. (Contains 3 tables…

The motion of a particle in a medium is dealt with either as a problem of mechanics or as a transport process in non-equilibrium statistical physics. The two kinds of approach are often unrelated as they are taught in different textbooks. The aim of this paper is to highlight the link between the mechanical and statistical treatments of particle…

In their paper the authors deal with the vital issues of creation and application of electronic teaching materials for natural science subjects teaching. They describe an experimental examination of qualitative impact of these aids on education. The authors present a part of research results, which they obtained in a major research focused on…

Self-explaining is a domain-independent learning strategy that generally leads to a robust understanding of the domain material. However, there are two potential explanations for its effectiveness. First, self-explanation generates additional "content" that does not exist in the instructional materials. Second, when compared to…

Wireless communications are ubiquitous. Students and teachers use iPhones[R], BlackBerrys[R], and other smart phones at home and at work. More than 275 million Americans had cell phones in June of 2009 and expanded access to broadband is predicted this year. Despite the plethora of users, most students and teachers do not understand "how they…

In 4 studies, the authors examined how intuitions about the relative difficulties of the sciences develop. In Study 1, familiar everyday phenomena in physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and economics were pretested in adults, so as to be equally difficult to explain. When participants in kindergarten, Grades 2, 4, 6, and 8, and college were…

Hydraulics is an engineering specialty and largely neglected as a topic in physics teaching. But the history of hydraulics from the Renaissance to the Baroque, merits our attention because hydraulics was then more broadly conceived as a practical "and" theoretical science; it served as a constant bone of contention for mechanics and…

Gerald Rutherford (1964), one of the original authors of the Harvard Project Physics course which emphasized the history of science, expressed a view of inquiry which advocated the historical re-constructions of significant experiments. To implement this view we examine two modes of historical re-constructions; Heering's ("Paper…

This paper reports the experiences of teachers involved in a novel retraining scheme designed to meet a short-term crisis in numbers of teachers of physics. Teachers trained in other subject areas underwent an intensive six-month training in physics and were then placed in schools. During the first year of teaching some support for ongoing…

The law of inertia is a problem in teaching due to the impossibility of showing the proposition experimentally. As we cannot do an experiment to verify the law, we cannot know if it is correct. On the other hand, we know that the science based upon it is successful. A study in the history of mechanics has shown that there are different foundations…

A playground can provide a valuable physics education laboratory. For example, Taylor et al. describe bringing teachers in a workshop to a playground to examine the physics of a seesaw and slide, and briefly suggest experiments involving a merry-go-round. In this paper, we describe an experiment performed by students from a Society of Physics…