Single-type, 8-fold-grooved, commercially accessible interlocking disks (ILDs) have been used for modeling of complex polyhedral and reticular topologies with relevance to inorganic and hybrid materials. The assembly of complex topologies relies on the preparation of secondary building units (SBUs), which exhibit different connectivity than that…

This paper shows how a freely downloadable and powerful software package, "SMath Studio," can be used to model physical systems in physics teaching. The software can form the basis of lecture demonstrations by teachers or can be used individually by students working in an educational environment or on their own home computers.

Many physics textbooks describe the way in which a capacitor in an RC circuit charges and discharges over time. A circuit that consists of a capacitor that is connected to a voltage divider as shown in Fig. 1 is commonly addressed, but the textbooks limit the discussion to the time immediately after the switch is closed and a long time after the…

Water can exhibit many different colors due to a variety of physical properties. Here, we focus on some observable colors within very pure freshwater. We only treat the absorption of light due to electronic and ro-vibrational excitations and scattering due to refractive index fluctuations of the water and the respective consequences for the…

This article describes a system of analysis aimed at characterizing students' scientific explanations. Science education literature and reform documents have been highlighting the importance of scientific explanations for students' conceptual understanding and for their understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge. Nevertheless, and despite…

In this study we have attempted, firstly, to describe programming protocols developed for the teaching of an Electromagnetism course in the university degrees of Electrical Engineering and Energy Engineering, and secondly, to evaluate students' satisfaction with the simulation practices through MATLAB® programming. The main objective of the…

Students often find the study of electrostatics to be abstract, heavily mathematical, and non-intuitive. This paper describes an inquiry-based approach to teaching electrostatics in an introductory calculus-based physics class that emphasizes the primacy of student conceptual understanding.

There have been many recent articles in this journal highlighting simple demonstrations of a wide variety of acoustic phenomena. In introductory physics courses, sound waves and their propagation through air, and resonance in musical instruments, are covered in detail. However, attention is not usually paid to the active role that our ears play in…

The use of video analysis for the study of motion and forces is well established in the worlds of physics and biomechanics. The issue of parallax error, sometimes referred to as perspective error or scaling error, when videotaping a moving object is known, and the experimenter is often counseled to be "far away." However, "far…

Concepts can be examined in two groups as abstract and concrete ones. While concrete concepts are improved as a result of students' experiences, it is considerably challenging for students to perceive abstract concepts. Since chemistry includes abstract concepts largely, it is considered to be hard to comprehend as a class by students. In fact,…

A journey through the wonderful world of spinning tops, emphasising their practical use in both amusement, skill and as part of the physics curriculum.

Physics education research over the past few decades has made significant advances toward improving instructional practices and developing effective instructional materials for physics classrooms. In some contexts, however, after multiple instructional refinements difficulties can remain persistent. Recent findings in PER suggest that many of…

With the unprecedented increase of forced displacement in recent years, there has been a growing concern with how children from migrant and refugee backgrounds adjust to resettlement in Western schools. Adopting a sociocultural approach to science education, the authors explore how scientific concepts related to the water cycle and practices such…

Universities are recognizing the need to prepare graduates to think conceptually and have the ability to take on complex, real-world problems. Strategies to assess conceptual knowledge are limited and often require more time and effort to complete than is accessible for most undergraduate courses. Card sorting is a very broad technique for…

This study introduces a small-scale chemistry practicum technique with the concept of acid-base identification, determination of pH with indicators, and neutralization reactions with the concept of titration. The first experiences of teachers and students in small-scale chemistry practicums are revealed. Action research was carried out to…