Newton's law of cooling describes an object whose temperature decreases exponentially with time. Because of its many applications, it is a frequent topic of introductory physics labs. In this article, I describe an experiment designed for the freshman year algebra-based physics course that applies this law to answering the question, "Why…

Difficulties encountered by teachers in giving a definition of the term "energy", and by students in grasping its actual meaning, reflect the lengthy process through which the concept eventually came to maturity around 1850. Tracing the history of this process illuminates the different aspects covered by the term and shows the important…

When teaching physics, it is often difficult to get biology-oriented students to see the relevance of physics. A complaint often heard is that biology students are required to take physics for the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) as part of a "weeding out" process, but that they don't feel like they need physics for biology. Despite…

Bird flight and lift in general is a complex subject which is also difficult to teach in a classroom. In order to support the teaching of this curriculum-based subject, an interactive exhibit to demonstrate aerodynamic aspects of objects has been developed, implemented and evaluated with 262 middle school students. The empirical evaluation…

The effect of force requirements on response effort was examined using inbred C57BL/6J mice trained to press a disk with their snout. Lateral peak forces greater than 2 g were defined as responses (i.e., all responses above the measurement threshold). Different, higher force requirements were used to define criterion responses (a subclass of all…

This article describes an experiment that measures the forces acting on a flying bird during takeoff. The experiment uses a minimum of equipment and only an elementary knowledge of kinematics and Newton's second law. The experiment involves first digitally videotaping a bird during takeoff, analyzing the video to determine the bird's position as a…

The surface-to-volume ratio is an important quantity in thermal physics. For example it governs the behaviour of heating or cooling of physical objects as a function of size like, e.g. cubes or spheres made of different material. The starting point in our paper is the simple physics problem of how cheese cubes of different sizes behave if heated…

Modern low-cost data acquisition systems enable pupils to study the voltage-current characteristics of a wide range of different materials and devices in a quick and convenient way. In particular, it is possible to study materials, such as meat and vegetables, not normally associated with school physics experiments.

Telling stories can be an effective way of introducing science concepts. This article provides an annotated bibliography of fiction and nonfiction books for K-12 students and adults on static electricity, surface tension, bubbles, chromatography, slugs and other creatures, plants, physical and chemical change, strength of shapes, collections of…