We believe that a natural focus of the physics education research community is on understanding and improving students' learning in our physics courses. Due to the increase in technology, we can bring laboratory experiments closer to our students. It is necessary to update our laboratories technologically to get closer to the world in which our…

In everyday life, we usually directly note two basic forces: gravity and electromagnetism. Gravity--as in the acceleration due to Earth's gravity--tends to be a background force of sorts, something that is always present and always the same. We don't always see electricity and/or magnetism as such, but their subsidiaries are all around…

The electromotive force (EMF) is the work per unit charge around a wire loop caused by a time-varying magnetic flux threading the loop. It is due to a force moving the charges around the loop. This is true whether the change in flux is due to the wire loop being stationary and the field changing in time, or the loop moving through a spatially…

Regardless of the cost and long preparation time, tactile materials are increasingly being used in science and mathematics education for students with visual impairment. In this study, a hands-on tactile activity related to making magnets using a STEM educational approach for students with visual impairment are introduced.

Students at a K-8 magnet school drastically lacked opportunities for physical activity throughout their school day. The authors (physical education teacher and graduate advisors) describe how the physical education teacher advocated and made positive change in her school. The physical education teacher conducted a physical activity needs…

The Curie temperature, also called the Curie point, is the temperature at which magnetic material undergoes a phase transition from ferromagnetic to paramagnetic properties. The characteristics of permanent magnets appear below the Curie temperature--below 400 °C (673 K) for commercial ferromagnetic materials such as ferrite or neodymium. In…

Many of the old demonstrations in electricity and magnetism can be performed more effectively and with greater visual appeal by using newly available neodymium magnets and color LEDs. For this reason several demonstrations, commonly used for teaching electromagnetic induction and Lenz's law, have received renewed attention in recent years. In…

This paper describes a new lab experiment where students explore the magnetic force on a permanent magnet placed inside a short solenoid. This lab is the fourth experiment performed in the second semester of the calculus-based introductory physics course at Washington University in St. Louis. The experiment is performed using a speaker (which…

There have been a few methods described in this journal and elsewhere for measuring the wavelength of the standing electromagnetic waves in a microwave oven. Typically, these involve melting chocolate, cheese, or some other substance on a plate that is prevented from rotating. In this article I describe a more dynamic and colorful technique that…

Electromagnetic radiation can be classified into two major types depending on its ability to detach electrons from atoms: ionising and non-ionising. The aforementioned categorization is significant due to the effects of ionising radiation on human tissue (e.g. carcinogenesis). However, many students around the globe cannot distinguish these two…

A significant goal when teaching at the secondary education level is to present the generality of the procedures that are being used to describe a wide range of different physical phenomena. However, this approach is abandoned by physics instructors in many cases since the general mathematical background needed to present the above generality is…

The most common type of homopolar motor comprises a cylindrical neodymium magnet, a battery, and a non-ferromagnetic frame rotating around the battery. Here, the author substituted a coiled spring for the frame. Due to this change, a new and intriguing effect emerges, the axial buzzing of the spring during its rotation. This paper describes the…

Measuring the "e/m" ratio is a classic experiment in the physics curriculum. We show that smartphones can reliably measure the magnetic field strengths involved. Moreover, phone cameras and the image-processing software Tracker can make determining the charge-to-mass ratio of the electron more accurate.

In the teaching and learning of physics, simulations have many applications. Simulations can help to illuminate concepts (such as the motion of electrons in electric or magnetic fields) that cannot usually be seen with the unaided eye, or to slow down things that happen over short time periods or at high speeds. They can also be used to help…

To help engage non-physics majors in a General Physics II (Electricity & Magnetism) course at the University of Indianapolis, students used their smartphones to detect magnetic fields on campus in a semester-long data collection project. This paper discusses details about the design of the project, previous studies that utilize smartphones for…