The growing popularity of mobile technologies in educational settings, from grade schools through college, has prompted science educators to prepare preservice teachers to successfully integrate technology into science teaching. This mixed-methods study explores the effectiveness of a mobile technology-based physics curriculum, Exploring Physics,…

This research aims to develop open ended-based worksheet in improving students' high-level thinking skills on static fluid materials. The method used in this research is Research and Development (R&D) with 3 steps namely, the initial stage, then the design and development of the product, and finally the product testing. The data analysis…

Background: Causes produce effects via underlying mechanisms that must be inferred from observable and unobservable structures. Preschoolers show sensitivity to mechanisms in machine-like systems with perceptually distinct causes and effects, but little is known about how children extend causal reasoning to the natural continuous processes studied…

A focus of learning analytics research has been the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data from online academic technologies, particularly in higher education where these technologies are incorporated extensively into the student learning experience. In particular, the learning management system (LMS) has emerged as a technology…

A well-known physics demonstration is to pull a tablecloth rapidly from under some crockery without disturbing the crockery. An interesting question is whether the same result can be expected if the crockery is replaced by a ball, given that the ball might roll backwards on the tablecloth. Theoretical and experimental results are presented showing…

Some new experiments using an improved version of the "tornado tube" are described here. The improved tornado tube consists of two plastic transparent bottles whose openings are connected with a ball valve, available at most hardware stores. After being filled with fluid and inverting, this tube allows demonstration of the generation,…

In November 2014 the "Rosetta" mission to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko made the headlines when its "Philae" lander completed a successful unpowered descent onto the surface of the comet nucleus after "7 hours of terror" for the mission scientists. 67P's irregular shape and rotation made this task even more…

When the sun rose over America on July 4, 2012, the world of science had radically changed. The Higgs boson had been discovered. Mind you, the press releases were more cautious than that, with "a new particle consistent with being the Higgs boson" being the carefully constructed phrase of the day. But, make no mistake, champagne corks…

We look at the problem of the minimum speed of projectiles in a constant gravitational field. In the absence of resistance, the problem may be studied in the frame of a high school curriculum. One needs only Newton's laws and a minimum amount of analytic geometry to compute the orbit, which turns out to be parabolic. Furthermore, in case the…

The effect of PowerPoint Presentation-based (PPPb) quiz to the students' scores has been rarely studied. It is the intention of this research to understand the effect of PPPb quiz to students score in wave motion and the students' experiences under such a strategy. This research used a mixed approach: quasi-experimental to learn if scores gain was…

This research aims to reveal the misconceptions of prospective primary school teachers on the fundamental physics concepts such as force, frictional force, work, conservation of energy, mechanical energy, kinetic energy, potential energy, energy stored in springs on the topic of "Force and Motion" and to assess the misconceptions based…

Science teachers know the deep satisfaction of engaging students in science activities and seeing their excitement when a new idea suddenly makes sense. Providing opportunities to foster such student delight is one way to recruit talented undergraduate physics majors into the teaching profession.

This article contrasts the normal method for drawing Lewis structures with a two-step systematic approach. The latter approach uses a known molecular connectivity and a knowledge of the number of valence electrons that each atom possesses to visualize bonds that are formed by pairing electrons, one from each atom. This process is repeated until at…

In this article, we outline a demonstration that is relatively simple to perform but whose results require a quite subtle interpretation of Faraday's Law. When a very small magnet is dropped through a coil it can tumble as it falls leading to 'spikes' in the measured emf signal. The experiment, and demonstration, can be used in an introductory…

A pair of galvo mirrors reflecting light from a laser pointer is suggested for use as a school demonstration of Lissajous figures. The device is small, cheap and easy to assemble. Combined with a two-channel waveform generator, a full spectrum of excellently stable Lissajous figures can be generated (concerning frequency ratio, amplitude ratio and…