Presents the lecture given by the Millikan Award winner on a global study of the role of the laboratory in physics education. Discusses physics education in India, Malaysia, Great Britain, and the United States. (NB)

Two or three years ago, there was an exchange of several articles in "Primary Science Review" about the question: "What is the best way of naming the forces acting on a descending parachute?" (Harrison, 2001; Harlen, 2002; Sell, 2002). Stuart Harrison reported that, according to the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), a third of…

Newton's Cradle is a series of bifilar pendulums used in physics classrooms to demonstrate the role of the principles of conservation of momentum and kinetic energy in elastic collisions. The paper reviews the way in which textbooks use Newton's Cradle and points out the unsatisfactory nature of these treatments in almost all cases. The literature…

This article aims to contribute to the literature on conceptual change by engaging in direct theoretical and empirical comparison of contrasting views. We take up the question of whether naive physical ideas are coherent or fragmented, building specifically on recent work supporting claims of coherence with respect to the concept of force by…

The aim of this study was to shed some light on the organization of naive knowledge, and on the process of conceptual change in everyday physics, more specifically regarding the concepts of sound and heat. Eighty-three 8-year-old children were interviewed individually in order to see if they attributed the properties of objects (such as…

The analysis of tautochrone problems involves the solution of integral equations. The paper shows how a reasonable assumption, based on experience with simple harmonic motion, allows one to greatly simplify such problems. Proposed solutions involve only mathematics available to students from first year calculus.

This article is a short introduction on how to use Modellus (a computer package that is freely available on the Internet and used in the IOP "Advancing Physics" course) to build physics games using Newton's laws, expressed as differential equations. Solving systems of differential equations is beyond most secondary-school or first-year college…

This article discusses ways in which the visual arts can be introduced into the teaching of A-level Physics and the benefits that can be gained.

Outlined is a simple design for a working wave-powered electrical generator based on one made on the BBC "Rough Science" TV series. The design has been kept deliberately simple to facilitate rapid pupil/student involvement and most importantly so that there is much scope for their own ingenuity and ideas. The generator works on the principle of…

Conceptual physics (CP) is an introductory survey course in which basic concepts are emphasized instead of formula-driven problem solving. Mathematical derivation is replaced by verbal explanation, pictorial representation, observations of phenomena, and logical reasoning. Algebraic equations are used as guides to thinking rather than recipes for…

Many transformations that take place over time can only occur in one temporal direction, and adults are highly sensitive to the differences between forward and backward presentations of such events. In seven experiments using two selective-looking paradigms, 4- and 8-month-olds were shown forward and backward videotapes of events involving the…

The motion of a magnet through a coil is analysed through a model of magnetic monopoles. The magnetic flux of a monopole passing through a loop is explained and also its rate of change. By a superposition of voltages produced by the monopoles on the coils the shape of the voltage versus time graph is explained. Also examined is the interaction of…

In the author's opinion, the separation of content between science, math, engineering, and technology education should not exist. Working with the relationship between these content areas enhances students' efforts to learn about the physical world. In teaching students about design, technology, and engineering, attention should be given to the…

Learning physics is a complex phenomenon. In this article, we use concepts from the theory of nonlinear systems to study the development of language in classroom science in an experimental unit on chaos theory in a German 10th-grade physics classroom. In ongoing activity, the explanations students developed for phenomena emerged through…

The ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN has a substantial collaborative Education and Outreach project. This article describes its activities and how it promotes physics to students around the world.