The "Next Generation Science Standards" call for engaging students in practices that scientists and engineers use (NGSS Lead States 2013), but it's also important to explicitly teach thinking approaches that scientists and engineers use. One way to help children think and act like scientists and engineers is to engage them with…

The study aimed to examine AR-based teaching material's effect on viscera learning through algorithmic thinking by the primary school teacher candidates who are sophomores in the classroom teaching department in the spring term of the 2018-2019 academic year at a state university in the Eastern Black Sea and selected by convenience method. Viscera…

We look at the problem of the minimum speed of projectiles in a constant gravitational field. In the absence of resistance, the problem may be studied in the frame of a high school curriculum. One needs only Newton's laws and a minimum amount of analytic geometry to compute the orbit, which turns out to be parabolic. Furthermore, in case the…

A computational laboratory experiment investigating molecular models for hexagonal boron-carbon-nitrogen sheets (h-BCN) was developed and employed in an upper-level undergraduate chemistry course. Students used the Avogadro user interface for molecular editing and the WebMO interface for the quantum computational workflow. Density functional…

A national survey of physics faculty was conducted to investigate the prevalence and nature of computational instruction in physics courses across the United States. 1246 faculty from 357 unique institutions responded to the survey. The results suggest that more faculty have some form of computational teaching experience than a decade ago, but it…

This methodological paper examines current conceptions of reliability in chemistry education research (CER) and provides recommendations for moving beyond the current reliance on reporting coefficient alpha (a) as reliability evidence without regard to its appropriateness for the research context. To help foster a better understanding of…

The authors describe their study of a curricular module on computational thinking (CT) implemented within an elementary science methods course and reported insights on preservice science teachers' (PSTs') beliefs about CT integration. The research question was, "Following participation in a curricular module on CT, what is the nature of PSTs'…

The reemergence of virtual reality (VR) in the past few years has led to affordable, high-quality commodity hardware that can offer new ways to teach, communicate, and engage with complex concepts. In a higher-education context, these immersive technologies make it possible to teach complex molecular topics in a way that may aid or even supersede…

We investigate upper-division student difficulties with direct integration in multiple contexts involving the calculation of a potential from a continuous distribution (e.g., mass, charge, or current). Integration is a tool that has been historically studied at several different points in the curriculum including introductory and upper-division…

Gravitational lensing is an interesting phenomenon in astronomy and is most typically given rise to by galaxies. The majority of the matter in a galaxy is thought to be dark matter, and the galactic gravitational lensing effect is mainly caused by dark matter halos. In gravitational lensing-related demonstrations in physics education, the feet of…

A novel method of measuring the coefficients of kinetic and rolling friction is proposed. The method is simple to implement and reliable. Samples of measurements and calculations are presented.

The present article demonstrates a way of programming using an Excel spreadsheet to teach Fourier series expansion in school/colleges without the knowledge of any typical programming language. By using this, a student learns to approximate partial sum of the n terms of Fourier series for some periodic signals such as square wave, saw tooth wave,…

This study aims to design a mechanism with which the density of any solid or liquid can be determined without measuring its mass and volume in order to help students comprehend the concept of density more easily. The "solidensimeter" comprises of two scaled and nested glass containers (graduated cylinder or beaker) and sufficient water.…

North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and, more recently, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) has added a grave threat to world order. The threat presented by these weapons depends critically on missile range, i.e., the ability to reach North America or Europe while carrying a nuclear warhead. Using the limited information available…

Free fall is commonly discussed as an example of the equivalence principle, in the context of a homogeneous gravitational field, which is a reasonable approximation for small test masses falling moderate distances. Newton's law of gravity provides a generalisation to larger distances, and also brings in an inhomogeneity in the gravitational field.…