The determination of the speed of sound in air is a classical experiment, usually performed with a resonance tube apparatus. The measured value can be checked against Eq. (1), which describes the temperature dependence of the speed of sound in dry air. A modern implementation of this speed of sound investigation uses an Arduino Uno microcontroller…

The ideal gas law, "PV = nRT," is one of the simplest physical laws in nature that is introduced to students as early as in high school and first year in college. In this equation, "P" stands for pressure, "V" is the volume, "n" is the amount expressed in mole, "T" is the temperature in Kelvin…

This qualitative study aimed to explore what are pre-service elementary teachers' (N = 325) conceptualizations of scientific practices prior to their entry into the science teaching methods course through their drawn images and narratives of the scientists (male and female) and teacher as scientists. Data (drawings, narratives, and responses to…

A pilot study, funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, supported 10 secondary schools across England to plan and deliver open-ended investigative practical work within science curriculum time. This enabled all students to experience the benefits of investigative work, rather than just those attending extracurricular STEM enrichment activities.…

One challenge for the introductory physics teacher is incorporating calculus techniques into the laboratory setting. It can be difficult to strike a balance between presenting an experimental task for which calculus is essential and making the mathematics accessible to learners who may be apprehensive about applying it. One-dimensional kinematics…

The aim of this paper is to investigate the stability of a bottle filled with different volumes of water, and to determine the angle at which it topples over for each volume of water. Data for the angle at which the bottle toppled were gathered experimentally using a cylindrical 1 litre bottle, and two theoretical models were then developed,…

This study examines students' reasoning surrounding seemingly contradictory Likert-scale responses within five items in the Colorado Learning Attitudes About Science Survey for Experimental Physics (E-CLASS). We administered the E-CLASS with embedded open-ended prompts, which asked students to provide explanations after making a Likert-scale…

After seeing several reports in newspapers making claims about the cause of death after children had swallowed button batteries, a team of students decided to try to establish which (if any) claims were true. The findings were reported in the Schools Exhibition at the ASE Annual Conference 2018 in Liverpool and are shared in detail here. (A…

This paper describes three methods of measuring the coefficient of restitution (CoR) for two different types of ball-on-ball collision. The first collision type (for which two different CoR measurement procedures are described) is a static, hanging steel ball forming part of a Newton's cradle arrangement, which is then hit by its adjacent…

The authors describe how grade 4 students carried out an investigation about growing cucumbers (members of the curcurbit or gourd family) where they read information sources about seed variety; germinated seeds under different conditions; measured and partitioned growing spaces; collected and analyzed data on germination, true leaf growth, and…

Young's double-slit experiment is one of the most historically significant works in physics, and one that is easily done in an introductory physics class. It is also an excellent example of an investigation that allows us to infer the nature of phenomena beyond direct observation. Unfortunately, perhaps because of this, it is often also an…

During the Jurassic period (201 million to 145 million years ago), termites up to 15 mm long consumed and recycled vegetation and feces. Since then, termites have evolved into some 3,000 identified species, have colonized every continent except Antarctica, and are major contributors to nutrient cycling and vertebrate food webs (Shaw 2014).…

This article argues that the role of practical work in science is overemphasised and misunderstood. Science is distinguished by the fact that it is a set of ideas about the material world and not by empirical enquiry. The latter is only one of six styles of reasoning that have been used to develop scientific ideas. The lack of clarity around the…

A simple mathematical formulation of Mach's principle is given based on a century of investigation into inertia, and used to check the results of Newton's famous bucket experiment.

Many preschool classrooms explore plant growth. However, because many plants take a long time to grow, it is often hard to facilitate engagement in some practices (i.e., since change is typically not observable from one day to another, children often forget their prior predictions or cannot recall what plants looked like days or weeks earlier).…