Students are well aware that when an electric current flows through a light bulb, it glows. As their grade increases, they have understood that electric current flows because electric charges move. Since the transfer of electric charges is not visible, students have many cognitive difficulties in understanding this process, and teaching materials…

This paper describes a way to simulate and visualise 3D representations of the resultant electric field vector propagation for plane, circular and elliptically polarised waves. These polarisation states are obtained by the superposition of two coherent linearly polarised waves oscillating in two mutually perpendicular directions. The required data…

This work presents two electronic systems experiments with resonance tubes, which generate automatically a sequence of several sound wave frequencies in a range defined by the user and then verifies the amplitude of each one in real-time, allowing for the immediate data visualization in a graph. Besides, they save all the frequency values and the…

We have added two improvements to a self-luminous LED stroboscope (a flashing point-like projectile developed for introductory mechanics): downsizing by replacing heavy and risky batteries with a compact and safe capacitor of several Farads (a so-called Super-C) and wireless control via ordinary IR (infrared) communications. Consequently, the…

Sound is an interesting topic for physics lessons at all ages. However, it is difficult to illustrate this ubiquitous phenomenon and many models do not adequately represent the properties of sound and thus promote unwanted conceptions. The experiment presented here avoids this by visualising sound itself with the help of the schlieren technique.…

An apparatus of the 70s for measuring thermal conductivity in different materials is used to visualize, through an infrared thermal imaging approach, temperature fields and the heat diffusion process. The observed temperature profiles also suggest solid grounds for a fair mathematical modelling of this phenomenon.

Recently, the physics education community has taken a keen interest in modernising physics education. However, while topics in modern physics have great potential to engage students, these topics are abstract and hard-to-visualise. Therefore, many students hold mistaken pictures and misconceptions, which can impede learning. In this article, we…

The recent works of oscillators are mainly focused on underdamped oscillation. Therefore, the writer proposes an experimental apparatus to demonstrate all types of damped harmonic oscillation. The apparatus utilizes an Arduino for data acquisition and an Excel spreadsheet for data analysis. By using this apparatus, the type of damped harmonic…

Large drop towers let you experience a couple of seconds of nearly free fall before stopping gracefully in magnetic brakes or bouncing a number of times on compressed air, as in the Turbo Drop tower considered in this work, where many complementary representations are used. An accelerometer taken along on the ride captured the forces experienced…

With the help of augmented reality apps objects and text can be added virtually to the physical world (e.g. physical experiments) in real time. The augmented reality (AR) app 'PUMA: "Spannungslabor"' enhances simple electric circuits experiments for students with virtual representations based on the electron gas analogy including…

In a spiral galaxy, the stars move in a circular motion around the galactic center, and the relation between velocity and the orbital radius is referred to as the rotation curve. Previous astronomical observation data indicate that the rotation curve is flat at the periphery of the galaxy, which completely dissatisfies Keplerian decline. Assuming…

To study the absorption of ultrasound in plexiglas we propose to use gadgets that are available to each student: an ultrasound humidifier, a liquid crystal display of a pad, a polaroid analyzer, a digital camera, a multimeter with thermocouple, and a stopwatch. These devices allow us to visualize a region in plexiglas where ultrasound is absorbed…

Sky appears to our students as a vast volume surrounding the Earth. The most striking astronomical events that they can witness in the sky are lunar phases and eclipses. However, eclipses do not occur as often as full and new phases of the Moon. This difference is due to the fact that the orbital planes of the Moon and the Earth do not overlap.…

One way to ease the solution of physics problems is to visualize the situation. However, by visualization we do not mean the pictorial representation of the problem. Instead, we mean a sketch for the solution of the problem. In this paper a new approach to solving physics problems, based on decomposing the problem into with and without gravity, is…

This paper develops the ideas of "The Pedagogical Power of Context: Iterative Calculus Methods and the Epidemiology of Eyam" (French "et al." 2018 "J. Phys. Educ."), where we considered the application of the Euler method to solve epidemiological problems. Our purpose was to convey some examples of school level work…