The law of conservation of momentum is a fundamental law of nature. It states that the momentum of an isolated system is conserved. In high school or introductory-level physics courses, for simplicity, teachers and textbooks always use collisions in one dimension as the examples to introduce the concept of conservation of momentum. To solve simple…

With recent curricular movements aimed at engaging students in science practices, more work is needed regarding evidence-based approaches for supporting students in developing competency in contexts such as chemistry. In this work, we focus on student engagement in constructing models related to graphical representations of reaction rate. Using…

An application for visualizing the dynamic properties of an equimolar binary mixture of isotropic reactive particles is presented. By introducing a user selectable choice for the activation energy, the application is useful to demonstrate qualitatively that the reaction rate depends on the above choice and on temperature. The application is based…

The famous motto of the Lucky Luke comics series and its accompanying drawing are analyzed from a physicist's viewpoint. They provide useful pedagogical tools to discuss such aspects of relativity as causality, the equivalence principle, gravitational blue shift, and the tachyonic antitelephone. [This article was first published in Hungarian in…

A vehicle starts from rest at constant acceleration, then cruises at constant speed for a time. Next, it decelerates at a constant rate.… This and similar statements are common in elementary physics courses. Students are asked to graph the motion of the vehicle or find the velocity, acceleration, and distance traveled by the vehicle from a given…

An introductory physics experiment has been developed to address the issues seen in conventional physics lab classes including assumption verification, technological dependencies, and real world motivation for the experiment. The experiment has little technology dependence and compares the acceleration due to gravity by using position versus time…

A wash bottle water displacement scheme is used to determine the kinetics of the iodide-catalyzed H[subscript 2]O[subscript 2] decomposition reaction. The reagents (total volume 5.00 mL) are added to a test tube that is placed in a wash bottle containing water. The mass of the water displaced in [approximately]60 s is measured. The reaction is…

Student interpretations of the equation for the first law of thermodynamics, [delta]U = q + w, an expression defining work done on or by a gas, w = -[image omitted]PdV, and an expression defining heat, q = [image omitted]C[subscript v]dT were investigated through a multiple-choice survey, a free-response written survey, and interviews. The…

This paper examines the use of the 3-D virtual world Second Life to explore basic mechanics in physics. In Second Life, students can create scripts that take advantage of a virtual physics engine in order to conduct experiments that focus on specific phenomena. The paper explores two particular examples of this process: (1) the movement of an…

The use of toys in physics teaching is common. This brief review of the physics of toys intends to show that they are not only very useful in lectures and demonstrations in order to motivate students but also very interesting from a scientific point of view. However, since their physics is sometimes too cumbersome, the effect can be the opposite.…

The widely used PASCO laboratory equipment is an excellent way to introduce students to many topics in physics. In one case, PASCO's equipment may be too good! Various experiments exist for calculating the kinetic coefficient of friction by measuring the acceleration of a sliding object under some constant force. With ever more accurate equipment,…

A refinement of an argument due to Maxwell for the equipartition of translational kinetic energy in a mixture of ideal gases with different masses is proposed. The argument is elementary, yet it may work as an illustration of the role of symmetry and independence postulates in kinetic theory. (Contains 1 figure.)

The physical analysis of a uniformly accelerating point charge provides a rich problem to explore in advanced courses in electrodynamics and relativity since it brings together fundamental concepts in relation to electromagnetic radiation, Einstein's equivalence principle and the inertial mass of field energy in ways that reveal subtleties in each…