The Social Problem Solving through Science (SPSS) project engaged middle school-aged youth in the study of local environmental challenges with implications for human health and well-being, both globally and locally. Students considered environmental risk factors in a series of structured activities to develop background knowledge on environmental…

In a recent article, Iain MacInnes analyzed the static equilibrium of a system consisting of a wine bottle and a wine butler. After discussing that composite system, students can be asked to consider only the bottle (and its contents) as the system. An interesting challenge for them is to describe the forces on the bottle in static equilibrium.

A puzzle was developed as a resource for teaching intermediate chemistry students where they need to use general intelligence and logic skills. The puzzle involves identification of name, age, subdiscipline of chemistry and position of 6 students around the table by using certain data provided to them.

There is a growing national recognition that teachers and teaching are at the heart of successful educational reform. However, few tools exist for measuring classroom instruction. The primary purpose of this article is to describe methods we developed to measure and study teaching, specifically while teachers were using a multimedia intervention…

In a unique school-university partnership, methods students collaborated with fifth graders to use the engineering design process to build their problem-solving skills. By placing the problem in the context of a client having particular needs, the problem took on a real-world appeal that students found intriguing and inviting. In this article, the…

Energy is a critical concept in physics problem-solving, but is often a major source of confusion for students if the presentation is not carefully crafted by the instructor or the textbook. Confusion can be caused by the careless use of language in energy discussions. Students consciously or unconsciously imitate a teacher in their use of…

Relativistic hydrodynamics is essential to our current understanding of nucleus-nucleus collisions at ultrarelativistic energies (current experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, forthcoming experiments at the CERN Large Hadron Collider). This is an introduction to relativistic hydrodynamics for graduate students. It includes a detailed…

We present a study of the ascending vertical motion of a self-propelled body under a uniform gravitational field suffering the action of two different types of air friction forces: linear on the velocity, which is valid for slowly moving bodies, and quadratic on the velocity. We study the special case where the thrust force is a decreasing…

We solve for the motion of an object with initial velocity v[subscript 0] and subject only to the combined drag of forces linear and quadratic in the velocity. This problem was treated briefly by Newton, after he developed a theoretical argument for the quadratic term, which we now know is characteristic of turbulent flow. Linear drag introduces a…

We measured what students perceive physicists to believe about physics and solving physics problems and how those perceptions differ from the students' personal beliefs. In this study, we used a modified version of the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey which asked students to respond to each statement with both their personal belief…

The equilibrium of a flexible inextensible string, or chain, in the centrifugal force field of a rotating reference frame is investigated. It is assumed that the end points are fixed on the rotation axis. The shape of the curve, the skipping rope curve or "troposkien", is given by the Jacobi elliptic function sn. (Contains 3 figures.)

A qualitative case study was conducted to investigate the understanding of the limiting reagent concept and the strategies used by five Year 11 students when solving four reaction stoichiometry problems. Students' written problem-solving strategies were studied using the think-aloud protocol during problem-solving, and retrospective verbalisations…

One of the most important goals the author has for students in his introductory-level physical geology course is to give them the conceptual skills for solving geologic problems on their own. He wants students to leave his course as individuals who can use their knowledge of geologic processes and logic to figure out the extended geologic history…

Metacognition is fundamental in achieving understanding of chemistry and developing of problem solving skills. This paper describes an across-method-and-time instrument designed to assess the use of metacognition in chemistry problem solving. This multi method instrument combines a self report, namely the Metacognitive Activities Inventory…

Energy is a critical concept in physics problem-solving, but is often a major source of confusion for students if the presentation is not carefully crafted by the instructor or the textbook. In the first three articles in this series we discussed several issues related to the teaching of energy concepts. We have saved a major single issue for this…