Background: Nature of Science (NOS) is defined to be the epistemology of science, and comprised of distinctive defining aspects. The representation of these NOS aspects in school science textbooks is likely to affect how students understand NOS. Representation of NOS aspects can differ between topics even within the same textbook and these topical…

Most of the physics (as well as the other sciences) taught in school can be described as well-established or consensus science. This is the kind of science knowledge that was mostly developed over a century ago. The inclusion of contemporary science research in compulsory school science teaching could be justified from a variety of reasons:…

This study evaluated the representations of nature of science (NOS) in U.S. state science standards, and examined the changes in these representations from documents advanced in the 1980s through 2016. Drawing from the consensus perspective on NOS and prior studies focusing on the analysis of textual content, documents were inspected for 10 target…

Light polarization, which is the direction of electromagnetic field oscillation, provides information that is highly different from that of spectral and intensity images and thus can enhance various fields of optical metrology. Polarization imaging can be also used by combining polarization and imaging, thereby providing polarization and spatial…

The social reaction to the recent detection of the Higgs boson and gravitational waves provided evidence that public interest in modern physics has reached a high point. Although these modern physics topics are being introduced into the upper secondary physics curricula in a growing number of countries, their potential for teaching various aspects…

Irish science education is aiming to develop post-primary students' knowledge of and about science through the introduction of 'nature of science' (NOS) in the new junior cycle science specification. This study aimed to investigate pre-service science teachers' views about a particular aspect of NOS, namely the aims and values of science. Aims and…

Action research was conducted in two sections of a scientific inquiry class in a Midwestern U.S. university to identify the types of questions that students ask for their investigations, identify emerging patterns regarding students' questioning, and determine students' ability to transfer their nature of science (NOS) understanding to a new…

The present study elaborates on a domain-specific approach to NOS (Nature Of Science) and employs a NOTSs (Nature Of The Sciences) agenda to investigate how Greek in-service physics teachers understand the unique features of school physics and biology. Our theoretical framework focuses on the notion of worldview and important differences that…

This article considers a further experimental demonstration of the equations of projectile motion employing the popular video-based motion modeling tool called Tracker. Using a downloaded video--of a free throw attempt by the NBA star Lebron James--from YouTube.com, the primary equations of projectile motion, together with a number of projectile…

This dissertation investigates inservice elementary teachers' nature of science (NOS) and nature of technology (NOT) implementation and development of NOS views. These investigations are done in three separate studies: views of NOS, implementation of NOS, and implementation of NOT. While the NOS is a necessary part of learning that should take…

The article proposes a new research object for a general physics course--the vapour Cartesian diver, designed to study the properties of saturated water vapour. Physics education puts great importance on the study of the saturated vapour state, as it is related to many fundamental laws and theories. For example, the temperature dependence of the…

The French horn is used to introduce the three basic properties of periodic waves: amplitude, frequency, and waveform. These features relate to the perceptual characteristics of loudness, pitch, and timbre encountered in everyday language. Visualizations are provided in the form of oscilloscope screenshots, spectrograms, and Fourier spectra to…

One of the core functions of explanation is to support prediction and generalization. However, some explanations license a broader range of predictions than others. For instance, an explanation about biology could be presented as applying to a specific case (e.g., "this bear") or more generally across "all animals." The current…

Teaching about drawbridges allows students to apply skills they have learned in math and science, while also being creative with design and the use of available materials. Students can be exposed to current and ancient designs. Today's drawbridges are beginning to look their age and are in need of updating and modernization. New bridges are being…

The study of buoyancy becomes very interesting when we measure the apparent weight of the body and the liquid vessel weight. In this paper, we propose an experimental apparatus that measures both the forces mentioned before as a function of the depth that a cylinder is sunk into the water. It is done using two load cells connected to an Arduino.…