An organic solar cell fabrication kit has been developed for demonstration in both undergraduate teaching classes and high school laboratories to promote the growing field of renewable energy and to facilitate empirical comprehension of solar technology. The laboratory focuses on fabricating organic photovoltaics (solar cells) and testing the…

Acharge pickup detector was developed at the University of Colorado for use in classroom demonstrations and in the dust accelerator at the Institute for Modeling Plasma, Atmospheres and Cosmic Dust (IMPACT). The detector can be used in a physics classroom to help high school and introductory-level physics students connect electromagnetic phenomena…

Calculating the effective resistance of an electrical network is a common problem in introductory physics courses. Such calculations are typically restricted to two-dimensional networks, though even such networks can become increasingly complex, leading to several studies on their properties. Furthermore, several authors have used advanced…

The teaching of instrumental analysis for many small colleges and high schools continues to be stymied by high-cost, complicated maintenance, high power requirements, and often the sheer bulk of the instrumentation. Such issues have led us to develop inexpensive instruments as part of a SMILE initiative (small, mobile instruments for laboratory…

This paper evaluates the viability of using controversies in teaching. An educational project has been elaborated in which some historical-philosophical clashes were introduced into the classical syllabus of physics. The historical-philosophical controversy dealt with here, took place between the French physicists Biot and Ampere in the 19th…

The University of Colorado's Physics Education Technology (PhET) website offers free, high-quality simulations of many physics experiments that can be used in the classroom. The Circuit Construction Kit, for example, allows students to safely and constructively play with circuit components while learning the mathematics behind many circuit…

Hands-on activities are one of the most popular instructional tools that enhance student understandings of the science concepts and enable them to get involved in science practices as well. However, most of science educators underestimate its effectiveness in the classrooms. In order to illustrate how these activities could be utilized for science…

In this solar panels and alternative energy project, students were challenged to develop a researchable question about solar energy and electronics and devise a means of answering it. Students worked cooperatively, with specific roles for each member, conducting research, conducting experiments, analyzing results, and writing the final…

Describes experiments conducted with semiconductors, photo-cells, and an oscilloscope. (SL)

Describes experiments in which a bipolar transistor is used to examine the behavior of a simple circuit. Also addresses problems in teaching the related concepts. (The experiments can be modified to incorporate devices other than bipolar transistors.) (JN)

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are described and three classroom experiments are given, one to prove the, low power requirements and efficiency of LEDs, an LED on-off detector circuit, and the third an LED photoelectric smoke detector. (BB)

Discusses the uses of thermistors in teaching electronics and semiconductors. Describes how to experimentally measure and graph the characteristics of a thermistor. Suggests one possible approach to understand the shapes of the characteristics. (CW)

Included is information regarding: fabrication of light emitting diodes, their operation as semiconductors, and an experiment demonstrating electroluminescence; experimenting with Random Access Memory (RAM) circuits; demonstrating Coriolis effect; measuring the diameter of an electron beam, E.H.T. meters; launching a trolley by catapult; a "random…

Describes an experiment that demonstrates the use of Kirchoff's rules in the analysis of electrical circuits. The experiment also involves the solution of a linear nonhomogeneous differential equation that is slightly different from the standard one for the simple RC circuit. (ZWH)