In order to investigate students' misunderstandings of potential wells and tunneling, a conceptual knowledge test was administered to Dutch secondary school students after they were taught about quantum mechanics. A frequency analysis of responses to the multiple choice questions (n = 98) and coding of the responses to the open-ended questions and…

The focus of this study is the co-actings of a 5-year-old girl, a swing, and physical phenomena. The study explores how the swing and physical phenomena worked as co-creators of the girl's scientific explorations as well as her bodily capacities and identity construction. Empirically, the study makes use of a video sequence generated during a…

This study investigated the effectiveness of simulation-based instruction on students' greenhouse effect achievement. The simulations were chosen from the Physics Education Technology Project (PhET) website. The research was a pretest-posttest with a control group design quasi-experimental study. The sample of the study consisted of 45 6th grade…

An introduction to the Quantum Chemistry Package (QCP), implemented in the computer algebra system Maple, is presented. The QCP combines sophisticated electronic structure methods and Maple's easy-to-use graphical interface to enable computation and visualization of the electronic energies and properties of molecules. Here we describe how the QCP…

This paper demonstrated a simple experiment for determining the coefficient of rolling friction of a hollow cylinder rolling on a curved track using a smartphone's sensors. We studied theoretically and experimentally the rolling motion of a hollow cylinder uncovered and covered with various materials (synthetic leather and sponge sheets). The…

Background: In England, practical work is a major part of secondary school science and yet little research has examined students' attitudes specifically to practical work. Purpose: To examine students' attitudes to practical work in biology chemistry and physics in secondary schools in England. Sample: The study involved 607 students from Year 7…

Physics faculty care about their students learning physics content. In addition, they usually hope that their students will learn some deeper lessons about thinking critically and scientifically. They hope that as a result of taking a physics class, students will come to appreciate physics as a coherent and logical method of understanding the…

In recent years, there has been an increased interest in conceptual blending in physics and mathematics education research as a theoretical framework to study student reasoning. In this paper, we adapt the conceptual blending framework to construct a blending diagram that not only captures the product but also the process of student reasoning when…

This research aimed to investigate the misconceptions on nuclear physics topics. Misconceptions are defined as ideas whose meaning departs from what is commonly accepted by scientific consensus. A total of 34 high school students of the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Sao Paulo (IFSP), Brazil, answered a questionnaire on…

Purpose: This quasi-experimental study evaluated the effects on students' autonomous motivation and satisfaction from a program integrating physics concepts in physical education. Method: A total of 487 students (age 13 [plus or minus] 1) participated in the study. The participants were students participating in physical education classes divided…

In the present study, an experimental teaching material using a soundcard oscilloscope developed for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education considering the engineering viewpoint was applied to address student's misconceptions in the alternating current (AC) circuit topic in high school physics. Four experiments were…

This study explores the nature of classroom talk as a way of teaching physics implemented by newly trained teachers. Their training introduced them, among others, to sociocultural theory and the promotion of classroom talk as a deliberate teaching strategy. This study is framed by Mortimer and Scott's framework for productive classroom talk. Data…

In 1919, Eddington and Dyson led two famous expeditions to measure the bending of light during a total solar eclipse. The results of this effort led to the first experimental confirmation of Einstein's General Relativity and contributed to create its unique and enduring fame. Since then, similar experiments have been carried out all around the…

Over the past several years, we have contributed several articles to "TPT" that focused on a forensics-style reexamination of historical events. In each article, we presented a case study as a pedagogy for teaching topics from introductory-level physics courses. Recently, we assembled our prior work into a series of…

Women in physics and engineering continue to remain underrepresented in higher education. To illuminate underlying processes, we used data from undergraduate Physics students (N= 338) enrolled in an introductory physics course to investigate the development of field belonging and its association with gender and perceived competence. Latent change…