Epistemological views characterise how individuals view the certainty, source and organization of knowledge. Previous research has demonstrated some relationships between epistemological views and nature of science (NOS) views. These relationships may be particularly interesting for biology students who are learning about topics such as evolution…

The Force Concept Inventory is one of the most popular and most analyzed multiple-choice concept tests used to investigate students' understanding of Newtonian mechanics. The correct answers poll a set of underlying Newtonian concepts and the coherence of these underlying concepts has been found in the data. However, this inventory was constructed…

Elementary teachers often hold inaccurate beliefs about the Nature of Science (NoS) and have negative attitudes toward science and mathematics. Using a pre-post design, the current study examined beliefs about the NoS, attitudes toward science and mathematics, and beliefs about the teaching of mathematics and science in a large sample study…

A general consensus exists among the leaders of both developed and developing nations that their citizens should be scientifically literate. Therefore, it is important for educational systems to provide students with access to pertinent scientific knowledge, an appreciation for the scientific processes, and the ability to evaluate scientific…

Our previous work correlated bond angles of group V and group VI hydrides (AH[subscript 3]E and AH[subscript 2]E[subscript 2], respectively, where E represents a lone electron pair) to the electronegativities of the atoms using the fraction of s character to relate the two. Here we have extended the correlation to the AH[subscript 2]X[subscript 2]…

In 1930, Einstein argued against the consistency of the time-energy uncertainty relation by discussing a thought experiment involving a measurement of the mass of the box which emitted a photon. Bohr seemingly prevailed over Einstein by arguing that Einstein's own general theory of relativity saves the consistency of quantum mechanics. We revisit…

This study focuses on students' conceptions of electric and magnetic fields at university level and of the interrelations between them. A total of 33 students participated in a paper and pencil test after the completion of first-year electricity and second-year electromagnetism courses. The conceptions were investigated in the contexts of a…

Feynman mentioned to us that he understood a topic in physics if he could explain it to a college freshman, a high school student, or a dinner guest. Here we will discuss two topics that took us a while to get to that level. One is the relationship between gravity and time. The other is the minus sign that appears in the Lagrangian. (Why would one…

Epistemological beliefs refer to an individual's thinking and beliefs about the nature of knowledge and knowing. The present study examined two research questions: (1) how do prospective elementary teachers' epistemological beliefs in science change as a result of instruction specifically designed to improve their epistemological beliefs and (2)…

The learning outcome of a physics laboratory course for medical students was examined in an interdisciplinary field study and discussed for the electrical physiology ("Propagation of Excitation and Nerve Cells"). At the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich (LMU) at a time about 300 medicine students were assessed in two successive…

This study examines how well second-year nonmajor organic chemistry students are learning to draw, interpret, and understand resonance-related structures. Students were tested seven times throughout an academic year using a set of four tasks that reflected their understanding of what these structures represent and how they relate to each other.…

We apply several physical ideas to determine the steady temperature distribution in a medium moving with uniform velocity between two infinite parallel plates. We compute it in the coordinate frame moving with the medium by integration over the "past" to account for the influence of an infinite set of instantaneous point sources of heat in past…

This article deals with the rather complicated if not incorrect way that the strengths of binary acids are rationalized to students in many classrooms owing to the way it is presented in first-year chemistry textbooks. The common explanations, which use the homolytic bond dissociation energy as a rationalization of the trend in acid strengths when…

Empirical correlations are a practical means of providing approximate answers to problems in physics whose exact solution is otherwise difficult to obtain. The correlations relate quantities that are deemed to be important in the physical situation to which they apply, and can be derived from experimental data by means of dimensional and/or scale…

Demonstrations are sometimes perceived as merely entertaining and expendable ancillaries for lectures and laboratory sessions. Nothing can be further from the truth. If done properly, demonstrations have much more value than lectures and labs when used to teach critical thinking in the sciences. There are effective ways to model scientific…