The image of free-falling bar has been recorded to study the effect of the motion on its observed length. This moving bar image is analysed using the Tracker software to determine its length and the end bar's position. An elongated appearance of the bar has been observed with movement. This effect relies on the speed and the exposure time during…

The video of a free-falling object was analysed in Tracker in order to extract the position and time data. On the basis of these data, the velocity, gravitational potential energy, kinetic energy, and the work done by gravity were obtained. These led to a rather simultaneous validation of the conservation law of energy and the work-energy theorem.…

We describe a simple STEM project for students to learn to measure atmospheric pressure by using a sensor of the type BMP180 together with the Arduino electronic platform. The collected experimental data, together with simple experiments, can be used to study the different pressure units and the relationship between pressure and force. Also, they…

During the periods of sudden transition to online education, the opportunity to make applications that might attract students' attention to the course has decreased even more. Although this deficiency tried to be eliminated with videos and simulations, it was not possible to ensure the active participation of students in some cases. In this study,…

Described is an established geophysics project to construct a solar wind monitor based on a nT resolution fluxgate magnetometer. Low-cost and appropriate from school to university level it incorporates elements of astrophysics, geophysics, electronics, programming, computer networking and signal processing. The system monitors the earth's field in…

In conventional e/m experiments performed in undergraduate laboratories, generally a simple mechanical ruler is used to measure the radius of the circular trajectory of the electrons. But, the measurement error in this technique is mostly big and varies from one student to another. As an alternative to a mechanical ruler, we proposed a more…

Students often find astronomy and astrophysics to be most interesting and exciting, but the Universe is difficult to access using only one's eyes or simple equipment available at different educational settings. To open up the Universe and enhance learning astronomy and astrophysics different planetarium software can be used. In this article we…

In this work we present an inexpensive experiment proposal to study the kinematics of uniform circular motion in a secondary school. We used a PC sound card to connect a homemade simple sensor to a computer and used the free sound analysis software "Audacity" to record experimental data. We obtained quite good results even in comparison…

We use apparatus based on two Geiger-Müller tubes, a simple electronic circuit and a Raspberry Pi computer to illustrate relativistic time dilation affecting cosmic-ray muons travelling through the atmosphere to the Earth's surface. The experiment we describe lends itself to both classroom demonstration to accompany the topic of special relativity…

In this paper we report on an activity sequence with a group of 29 pre-service physics teachers based on the reconstruction and analysis of a thought experiment that was crucial for Huygens' derivation of the formula for the centre of oscillation of a physical pendulum. The sequence starts with student teachers approaching the historical…

We present a simple and accurate experiment to obtain the speed of sound in air using a conventional speaker and a microphone connected to a computer. A free open source digital audio editor and recording computer software application allows determination of the time-of-flight of the wave for different distances, from which the speed of sound is…

Studies have shown that standard lectures and instructional laboratory experiments are not effective at teaching interference and diffraction. In response, the author created an interactive computer program that simulates interference and diffraction effects using the finite difference time domain method. The software allows students to easily…

The Timepix hybrid silicon pixel detector has been used to investigate the inverse square law of radiation from a point source as a demonstration of the CERN [at] school detector kit capabilities. The experiment described uses a Timepix detector to detect the gamma rays emitted by an [superscript 241]Am radioactive source at a number of different…

With the development of LabVIEW[TM] Education Edition schools can now provide experience of using this widely used software. Here, a few of the many applications that students aged around 11 years and over could develop are outlined in the resulting front panel screen displays and block diagrams showing the associated graphical programmes, plus a…

Reverberation within an enclosed space can be viewed as a superposition of a large number of simple echoes. The echoes that make up the sound of reverberation fall neatly into two categories, relatively loud and sparse early reflections, and relatively soft and dense late reflections. Ways in which readily available music production software can…