Teaching "scientific method" has long been a regular part of science education, and many curriculum standards call for it. But it has run into a variety of criticisms, which add up to the charge that it conveys an unrealistic and unappealing view of science. In this article, the authors discuss how science really works and provide different ways…

We apply several physical ideas to determine the steady temperature distribution in a medium moving with uniform velocity between two infinite parallel plates. We compute it in the coordinate frame moving with the medium by integration over the "past" to account for the influence of an infinite set of instantaneous point sources of heat in past…

Efficient glow-in-the-dark materials are usually difficult to synthesize and need complex experiments with long reaction times that are not appropriate for conventional lab teaching. Therefore, we describe a new experimental procedure that allows the production of one of the most efficient "glow-in-the-dark" materials (SrAl[subscript 2]O[subscript…

I have found that students easily understand that a measurement cannot be exact, but they often seem to lack an understanding of why it is important to know "something" about the magnitude of the uncertainty. This tends to promote an attitude that almost any uncertainty value will do. Such indifference may exist because once an uncertainty is…

When introducing heat transfer and insulation to my students, I have found that an insulation contest can be a good start. The experiment is fun, and it gets students thinking and wondering about heat transfer. When they have experienced how difficult it is to construct their own insulated container, they are very interested to know how a real…

A well-known classroom demonstration involves the rolling of hollow and solid objects down an incline. The fact that the objects roll at different rates can be used as a starting point in introducing students to rotational dynamics and rotational kinetic energy. In this paper we describe a simple quantitative version of the demonstration that is…

The titration of HCl with NaOH has traditionally been used to introduce beginning chemistry students to the concepts of acid-base chemistry and stoichiometry. The demonstration described in this article utilizes this reaction as a means of providing students an opportunity to observe the dynamic motion associated with a swirling vortex and its…

The present study explores the relationship between students' views of the nature of science (NOS) and their views of the nature of scientific measurement. A questionnaire with two-tier diagnostic multiple-choice items on both the NOS and measurement was administered to 179 first-year physics students with diverse school experiences. Students'…

An interdisciplinary, semester-long project is presented in which students grow Cucumis sativus (cucumber) plants from seeds and study the ability of the plants to remediate a heavy metal from contaminated soil or water or both. Phytoremediation strategies for environmental cleanup are presented as possible alternatives to chemical based clean-up…

In this paper, we describe two complementary nonlinear spectroscopy methods which both allow one to achieve Doppler-free spectra of atomic gases. First, saturated absorption spectroscopy is used to investigate the structure of the 5S[subscript 1/2] [right arrow] 5P[subscript 3/2] transition in rubidium. Using a slightly modified experimental…

In this activity, a possible problem related to global warming is clarified by the principle of states of water. The activity consists of an experiment that includes three scientific principles: Archimedes' Principle, the Law of Conservation of Matter, and the fluidity of liquids. The experiment helps students raise questions and open new horizons…

An apparently unnoticed analogy between the torque-free motion of a rotating rigid body about a fixed point and the propagation of light in anisotropic media is stated. First, a new plane construction for visualizing this torque-free motion is proposed. This method uses an intrinsic representation alternative to angular momentum and independent of…

Incandescent lamps with tungsten filaments have been in use for about a century while being gradually replaced by fluorescent lamps; in another generation both will quite probably be largely replaced by light-emitting diodes. Incandescent lamps (simply called "lamps" in what follows) burn out after a lifetime that depends mostly on the temperature…

A number of well-known hydrostatics problems dealing with Archimedes' principle concern a loaded boat floating in a pool. Examples of this sort of problem include: 1. (a) If a stone is thrown overboard from a boat floating in a pool, does the water level in the pool rise, fall, or remain unchanged? (b) If a hole is made in the bottom of the boat…

Doing physics "magic shows" for the general public or for local area schools is usually an integral part of any physics department's outreach program. These demonstration shows should not only teach fundamental physics principles with "standard" demonstrations (like the rocket cart) but should also include the "wow!" types of demonstrations for…