In special relativity, the transformation between inertial frames for an electromagnetic plane wave is usually derived for the time-harmonic case (the field is a sinusoid of infinite duration), even though all practical waves are of finite duration and may not even contain a dominant sinusoid. This paper presents an alternative derivation in which…

Sports are a popular and effective way to illustrate physics principles. Baseball in particular presents a number of opportunities to motivate student interest and teach concepts. Several articles have appeared in this journal on this topic, illustrating a wide variety of areas of physics. In addition, several websites and an entire book are…

Light rays emerge from an object in all directions. In introductory texts, three "special" rays are selected to draw the image produced by lenses and mirrors. This presentation may suggest to students that these three rays are necessary for the formation of an image. We discuss that the three rays attain their "special status" from the geometric…

This paper aimed to study of Grade 12 students' understanding of nature of science in learning about atom for peace through science technology and society (STS) approach. Participants were 51 Grade 12 who study in Thongphong high school Vientiane Capital City Lao PDR, 1st semester of 2012 academic year. This research regarded interpretive…

Newton's cradle, a device consisting of a chain of steel balls suspended in alignment, has been used extensively in physics teaching to demonstrate the principles of conservation of momentum and kinetic energy in elastic collisions. The apparent simplicity of the device allows one to test commonly hold views regarding the intuitive understanding…

This study examined children's drawings to explain children's conceptual understanding of plant structure and function. The study explored whether the children's drawings accurately reflect their conceptual understanding about plants in a manner that can be interpreted by others. Drawing, survey, interview, and observational data were collected…

In our science for non-science majors course "21st Century Physics," we investigate modern "Hubble plots" (plots of velocity versus distance for deep space objects) in order to discuss the Big Bang, dark matter, and dark energy. There are two potential challenges that our students face when encountering these topics for the…

The decline of young peoples' interest in science & technology education in western counties is causing concern worldwide. To help change this situation teachers need to take a leadership role in designing innovative approaches for engaging students with science curriculum in schools. Here I report on an action research study to examine…

This research focuses on inservice science teachers' conceptions of nature of science (NOS) before and after a two-week intensive summer professional development (PD). The PD combined traditional explicit NOS instruction, numerous interactive interventions that highlighted NOS aspects, along with documentary films that portrayed NOS in context of…

Stan Metzenberg offers a critical analysis of the draft "Massachusetts Science and Technology/Engineering Standards," which are for pre-Kindergarten to Grade 8 and introductory high school courses. Metzenberg claims that the document reveals significant, unacceptable gaps in science content, as well as some notable errors and…

We demonstrate Fermat's principle in optics by a simple experiment using reflection from an arbitrarily shaped one-dimensional reflector. We investigated a range of possible light paths from a lamp to a fixed slit by reflection in a curved reflector and showed by direct measurement that the paths along which light is concentrated have either…

The purpose of this study was to understand the impact of an apprenticeship program on high school students' understanding of the nature of scientific inquiry. Data related to seventeen students' understanding of science and scientific inquiry were collected through open-ended questionnaires. Findings suggest that although engagement in authentic…

After the discovery that superconducting magnets could levitate diamagnetic objects, researchers became interested in measuring the repulsion of diamagnetic fluids in strong magnetic fields, which was given the name "The Moses Effect." Both for the levitation experiments and the quantitative studies on liquids, the large magnetic fields necessary…

The "LCR" circuit is an important topic in the course of electricity and magnetism. Papers in this field consider mainly the forced oscillations and resonance. Our aim is to show how to demonstrate the free and self-excited oscillations in an "LCR" circuit. (Contains 4 figures.)

It has been suggested that there is a need to deepen the understanding of fluid dynamics in the introductory physics course and to offer interesting experiments to do so. To address this need we have developed a laboratory experiment and the supporting analysis to demonstrate the role of viscosity and the interestingly mysterious use of…