Wildland fires have become a regular aspect of life for people living in the western United States. Wildfire smoke is now impacting air quality across the United States. Unprecedented wildfires have swept through Australia, Russia, and Portugal in the last few years. Like other natural disasters, wildland fires can have a devastating impact on…

This three-day integrated 5E inquiry lesson that includes physics, engineering, and biology concepts, uses physical computing and photoplethysmography to learn about one's pulse. The main learning objective is to have students communicate how wave phenomena, like a pulse, can be analyzed using sensors, which is called physical computing. This…

Part 1 of the series looked at teaching speed and velocity. Part 2 considers the teaching of acceleration in physics. Teachers may find it okay to hurry through the concepts of speed and velocity because they are intuitive. But teachers cannot hurry through acceleration quite so quickly because it is not intuitive. Whereas velocity is a rate of…

For many high school students, physics is an abstract subject with complex mathematical statements explaining the world around them. The mathematics can feel intimidating and the introduction of difficult vocabulary, such as "force," "kinetic energy," or "spectroscopy," can give students the impression that physics is…

Some introductory physics courses begin where student interest is thought to be highest--in waves, sound, and light--before speed, velocity, and acceleration. For students with math difficulties, this order makes sense. But most physics courses, including the author's own, begin with a study of motion. Why? Mostly due to tradition, he admits. When…

Educational researchers have long advocated for the integration of computer simulations (sims) in science courses, citing the positive effects these tools have on students' science conceptual comprehension (Develaki 2017; Hannafin, West, and Shepard 2009; Lamb et al. 2011). In fact, Liao (2007) investigated the learning differences between…

As a high school AP Physics 1 and 2 teacher, Sean Crumley wanted to create a curricular unit that would authentically connect literacy, opportunities for writing, and science standards while engaging a 21st-century student. This article provides an example of how Crumley incorporated writing into one of his AP physics units, and it could serve as…

The authors developed a lesson for teachers to integrate chemistry and culinary arts, providing students with an opportunity to participate in three-dimensional learning, engage in science and engineering practices, and apply disciplinary core content and crosscutting concepts (Krajcik et al. 2014). The project involved five classes: three…

Spices, of course, do not make a meal, but they make a meal more enjoyable and memorable. Games do the same, allowing teachers to interact with their students in a different way than they normally do. They also have the potential to challenge and assess students' understanding of content. Games allow teachers to "play" with their…

COVID-19 is the first global pandemic in the age of the internet and the world has collectively documented the virus's spread, offering a unique opportunity to study both the virus and the streams related to COVID-19, on topics from testing access to income to race. They develop their own research question to investigate the relationship between…

FLEET is a free ship-design simulator that reaches students in their native environment--video games. It is also a physics simulator that applies content first learned through hands-on scientific investigations. Using FLEET, students design and use ships for various naval missions by mastering scientific concepts such as force, energy, and work,…

When teaching how "tension" and "compression" relate to geometrical structures such as bridges, arches, and domes, The author shows a picture of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, completed in the 14th century, and presents a lesson on using the curve called a catenary to explain how he teaches about tension and compression…

For many students, the first--and sometimes only--chance to look through a microscope is in high school biology class, where they observe plant and animal cells up close. Even in college, few students use a microscope for a subject other than biology. Thus, it can be a surprise to learn that microscopes are a primary tool used to understand the…

Teaching about wave structure and function is a critical element of any physical science curriculum and supported by "Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)" PS4: Waves and Their Applications in Technologies for Information Transfer. To support students' learning of these ideas, teachers often rely on developing graphic models of a…

With the widespread adoption of the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013), science teachers now aspire to integrate engineering into science instruction, as the standards suggest, yet many do not know how. The first steps are to define engineering and identify tasks that incorporate engineering, which can be…