The model of the Big Bang is an integral part of the national curricula in England and Wales. Previous work (e.g. Baxter 1989) has shown that pupils often come into education with many and varied prior misconceptions emanating from both internal and external sources. Whilst virtually all of these misconceptions can be remedied, there will remain…

Socially aware science literacy courses are sorely needed in every nation that is industrialized and democratic. This article puts societal topics into the more general context of science literacy, suggests that socially significant topics can fit comfortably into a physics literacy course, looks at energy and environment issues, and discusses how…

The purpose of this article is to present an interdisciplinary project, developed as a collaborative effort by the authors, involving the design of a telescope mirror as it was given to second semester calculus students. The goals of the project are to provide an applied setting for the topics typically covered in this type of course including the…

This study focused on students' misconceptions related to evaporation, evaporation rate, and vapour pressure. Open-ended diagnostic questions were used with 107 undergraduates in the Primary Science Teacher Training Department in a state university in Turkey. In addition, 14 students from that sample were interviewed to clarify their written…

Some students may find physics hard, but wouldn't it be more difficult to be taught it in a foreign language? The project described here uses English to teach physics to Spanish secondary school students. The students perform just as well in physics while their results in English improve markedly.

The "Hands on CERN" education project makes it possible for students and teachers to get close to the forefront of scientific research. The project confronts the students with contemporary physics at its most fundamental level with the help of particle collisions from the DELPHI particle physics experiment at CERN. It now exists in 14 languages…

The phenomenon of resonance is applicable to almost every branch of physics. Without resonance, there wouldn't be televisions or stereos, or even swings on the playground. However, resonance also has undesirable side effects such as irritating noises in the car and the catastrophic events such as helicopters flying apart. In this article, the…

A model for a shared nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) facility between a private university and two local community colleges is presented. The discussion of the components required for the shared facility, modes of data distribution, and overall effect on the curriculum is presented.

The Blackboard Learning System™, a Web-based server software system, is widely used on many college and university campuses today. This paper explores the use of the Blackboard system as a teaching and learning tool. Particular emphasis is placed on the online chat feature available through the Blackboard interface. During the fall 2002 pilot…

A previous study showed that elementary teaching majors enrolled in an inquiry-based physical science course developed chemistry content knowledge comparable to that of students enrolled in traditional lecture-based courses. This current study compares the views of these elementary teaching majors regarding how chemistry is taught and learned to…

In this study, the research problem was: "Is the computer based physics instruction as effective as laboratory intensive physics instruction with regards to academic success on electric circuits 9th grade students?" For this research of experimental quality the design of pre-test and post-test are applied with an experiment and a control…

The purpose of this study was to analyze the new Zambian high school physics syllabus and practical examinations for levels of inquiry and inquiry skills. Several inquiry skills are explicitly emphasized in the introduction, aims, content objectives and assessment sections in the national high school physics syllabus. However, the syllabus is less…

Classical physics has a long history of using demonstrations and experiments to develop ideas in introductory courses. The purpose of this exploration is to examine the effectiveness of a desk-top activity for helping students develop abstract reasoning. In the pilot exploration, students in three laboratory sections of a single physics course…

In this study, the research problem was: "Is the computer based physics instruction as effective as laboratory intensive physics instruction with regards to academic success on electric circuits 9th grade students?" For this research of experimental quality the design of pre-test and post-test are applied with an experiment and a control…

The aim of this study is to reveal secondary school students' misconceptions about simple electric circuits and to define whether specific misconceptions peculiar to Turkish students exist within those identified. Data were obtained with a conceptual understanding test for simple electric circuits and semi-structured interviews. Conceptual…