The general physics course that is taught in most departments as a service course for pre-med or pre-health students is undergoing a large shift in course content to better appeal to this group of learners. This revision also extends to the laboratory component, where more emphasis is being placed on teaching physics through biological examples.…

The article reports 4 experiments that explore the notion of recognition without awareness using words as the material. Previous work by Voss and associates has shown that complex visual patterns were correctly selected as targets in a 2-alternative forced-choice (2-AFC) recognition test although participants reported that they were guessing. The…

We investigated whether children at the ages of two and three years understand that a speaker's use of the definite article specifies a referent that is in common ground between speaker and listener. An experimenter and a child engaged in joint actions in which the experimenter chose one of three similar objects of the same category to perform an…

A "one-pot" method for acquiring kinetic data for the reactions of a series of substituted aromatic esters with potassium hydroxide using [supserscript 13]C NMR spectroscopy is described, which provides an efficient way to obtain sufficient data to demonstrate the Hammett equation in undergraduate laboratories. The method is…

The purpose of this study is to investigate characteristics of limit concepts through the simultaneous use of historical and experimental epistemologies. Based on a historical epistemology which is an investigation of historical developments in a mathematical concept raised in the history of mathematics, four different developments of limit…

Machine Learning methods for Performance Prediction in Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) have proven their efficacy; specific methods, e.g. Matrix Factorization (MF), however suffer from the lack of available information about new tasks or new students. In this paper we show how this problem could be solved by applying Transfer Learning (TL),…

The laboratory course is one of the most critical classes in any engineering program. Engineering by its very nature is a practical discipline, and the laboratory course is usually the first and only class where students are given the opportunity to apply the knowledge they are gaining in lecture courses to real-world equipment. As chemical…

We present a hands-on, inquiry-based activity exploring how CO[subscript 2] input to seawater affects the skeletons of several species of reef-building corals and other marine organisms by testing for changes in pH and calcium ion concentrations. Originally developed to inspire and recruit high school students in the state of Hawai'i into the…

Each May a Slovenian science extravaganza called Znanstival (Sciencetival, www.sciencetival.si) fills the streets and other public venues with the excitement of science. Organized by the staff of Hisa eksperimentov (House of Experiments or simply HE, www.he.si), a jewel of a science museum located in the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana, the annual…

In 2010, the Wiimote was upgraded with three-axis gyroscopes that can measure rotational velocities up to 2000 deg/s. The improved remote is referred to as the Wii MotionPlus. We present experiments that use the gyroscope's capabilities and compare data acquired in lab settings with those obtained in playground environments. Van Hook et al.…

The inverse-square law for the intensity of light received at a distance from a light source has been verified using various experimental techniques. Typical measurements involve a manual variation of the distance between a light source and a light sensor, usually by sliding the sensor or source along a bench, measuring the source-sensor distance…

In a recent issue of "TPT," Gordon Gore made interesting observations about the red or yellow fluorescence when laser beams are passed through olive oil. With the excellent visuals contained in that article, we present a pictorial explanation of the questions that were raised in Ref 1 ("Fun with Fluorescence in Olive Oil,"…

When referring to named objects, speakers can choose either a name ("mbira") or a description ("that gourd-like instrument with metal strips"); whether the name provides useful information depends on whether the speaker's knowledge of the name is shared with the addressee. But, how do speakers determine what is shared? In 2…

A simple apparatus is described which serves as a materials testing laboratory. Bolts are placed in it and subjected to tensile and torsional stress while being tightened. The tensile and torsional stress and strain can be measured, which enables the determination of several mechanical properties of the bolt material, including Young's…

The construction of a voltaic pile (battery) is a simple laboratory activity that commemorates the invention of this important device and is of great help in teaching physics. The voltaic pile is often seen as a scientific toy, with the "pile" being constructed from fruit. These toys use some strips of copper and zinc inserted in a piece…