The Teacher Academy in the Natural Sciences (TANS) provided middle school (U.S. Grades 6-8) teachers (N = 81) with intensive professional development in chemistry, geosciences, and physics through 13 days of face-to-face instruction that was extended with 2 online science modules per discipline. Because we administered online module assessments…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of REACT strategy developed in relation to "Particulate nature of the matter" subject on academic achievement and conceptual change. This study was accompanied by pre-test-post-test control group design. The academic achievement and concept test, which were developed, was distributed…

This thesis explores two case studies into the use of short answers and self-explanation to improve student learning in physics. The first set of experiments focuses on the role of short answer questions in the context of computer-based instruction. Through a series of six experiments, we compare and evaluate the performance of computer-assessed…

Physics is generally regarded as difficult and uninteresting. The teaching of physics with the use of an appropriate teaching strategy can improve students' achievement. The aim of this research is to examine the effect of the modified Know-Want-Learn (mKWL) strategy on primary school students' achievement in physics. The Know-Want-Learn (KWL)…

Static friction is an important concept in introductory physics. Later in the year students apply their understanding of static friction under more complex conditions of static equilibrium. Traditional lab demonstrations in this case involve exceeding of the maximum level of static friction, resulting in the "onset of motion." (Contains…

Few plays in baseball are as consistently close and exciting as the stolen base. While there are several studies of sprinting, the art of base stealing is much more nuanced. This article describes the motion of the base-stealing runner using a very basic kinematic model. The model will be compared to some data from a Major League game. The…

Have you ever noticed that you can go all day without a single call on your phone and then suddenly you get two calls at once? This is actually not as uncommon as it sounds and there is a mathematical reason for why we should expect it to happen, believe it or not.

A $1 plastic helicopter toy (called a Wacky Whirler) can be used to demonstrate lift. Students can make basic measurements of the toy, use reasonable assumptions and, with the lift formula, estimate the lift, and verify that it is sufficient to overcome the toy's weight. (Contains 1 figure.)

The Frahm resonance principle, in which resonating reeds indicate the frequency of mechanical or electrical oscillations, is a hardy perennial. In this note we will give some history, show some original apparatus, and show how it may be reproduced with relatively little effort.

It is well known that sound waves in air are longitudinal waves. Although teachers use analogies such as compressing horizontal springs to demonstrate what longitudinal waves look like, students still present some difficulty in understanding that (1) sound waves correspond to oscillations of air particles, and (2) there is no "air flow"…

Each time students engage in a classroom activity, they make tacit interpretations (about the nature of those activities) that influence how they reason and ultimately what they learn. For example, a student answering a physics question on a worksheet might draw on her everyday thinking to help make sense of the physics, or she might not even…

Diffusion has often been taught in science courses as one of the primary ways by which molecules travel, particularly within organisms. For years, classroom teachers have used the same common demonstrations to illustrate this concept (e.g., placing drops of food coloring in a beaker of water). Most of the time, the main contributor to the motion…

This paper describes the construction of a simple inexpensive scanner which can be used in conjunction with a data logger to produce intensity plots of diffraction and interference patterns. Making use of the drive mechanism from an old inkjet-printer is the central feature. (Contains 7 figures.)

We discuss how compressed images created by modern digital cameras can lead to even severe problems in the quantitative analysis of experiments based on such images. Difficulties result from the nonlinear treatment of lighting intensity values stored in compressed files. To overcome such troubles, one has to adopt noncompressed, native formats, as…

It is hard to imagine teaching physics without doing experimental measurements of position as a function of time. These measurements, needed for the determination of velocity and acceleration, are most easily performed with the help of photogates. Unfortunately, commercial photogates are rather expensive. Many require the purchase of an additional…