Based on a three-year-long ethnography of the hobby of model rocketry, I present a practice-centered theory of interest relationships--that is, the pattern of long-term, self-motivated engagement in open-ended practices that has been theorized under the concept of "individual interests". In contrast to extant theories of individual interests, in…

This experiment examines the causal effect an electronic classroom response system (ECRS) has on students. Previous studies using an ECRS in the classroom indicate improved performance; however, many have confounds typical of classroom studies. To complement these studies, we conducted a laboratory study to minimize these confounds and concentrate…

This paper describes an enjoyable, simple, and inexpensive way to perform Young's two-source experiment using sound waves. The wave source is a simple aluminum rod (a "singing rod").

The similar mathematical forms of Coulomb's law and Newton's law of gravitation suggest that two uniformly charged spheres should be able to orbit each other just as two uniform spheres of mass are known to do. In this paper we describe an experiment that we performed to demonstrate such an orbit. This is the first published account of a…

People discriminate remarkably well among large numerosities. These discriminations, however, need not entail numerical representation of the quantities being compared. This research evaluated the role of both non-numerical and numerical information in adult judgments of relative numerosity for large-numerosity spatial arrays. Results of…

Terms to be familiar with before you start to solve the test: cytokines, cytokine receptors, cDNA library, cDNA synthesis, poly(A)[superscript +] RNA, primer, template, reverse transcriptase, restriction endonucleases, cohesive ends, expression vector, promoter, Shine-Dalgarno sequence, poly(A) signal, DNA helicase, DNA ligase, topoisomerases,…

Two students, meeting together with a teacher, redid historical experiments. Unlike conventional instruction where science topics and practices often fragment, they experienced interrelatedness among phenomena, participants' actions, and history. This study narrates actions that fostered an interrelated view. One action involved opening up…

In this article, the authors explored the existence of across-notation automatic numerical processing using size comparison and same-different paradigms. Participants were Arabic speakers, who used 2 sets of numerical symbols--Arabic and Indian. They were presented with number pairs in the same notation (Arabic or Indian) or in different ones…

Three experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that the perception of limb orientation depends on inertial eigenvectors against the alternative that it depends on the center of mass. In all experiments, each participant pointed at visible targets with his or her occluded right arm while center-of-mass and inertial eigenvectors were…

Eight chemistry textbooks written from 1758 to 1891 have been analyzed for the way they present the chemistry of the oxides of tin. This analysis gives insight into the foundation of a number of chemical ideas such as nomenclature and composition used in modern chemistry. Four major preparation techniques for the production of tin oxides emerge…

This article presents four experiments that tested predictions of SOB (Serial Order in a Box), an interference-based theory of short-term memory. Central to SOB is the concept of novelty-sensitive encoding, which holds that items are encoded to the extent that they differ from already-encoded information. On the additional assumption that…

The digital era brings with it far-reaching changes. These changes can and will be good for society, on balance, if individuals are able to look down the road and around corners and plan ahead accordingly. Those individuals in higher education have an enormous role to play during this transition. Much turns on whether they are able to seize the…

The results of two text-change experiments are reported. The experiments were designed to investigate the syntactic representation of garden path sentences such as "While the man hunted the deer that was brown and graceful ran into the woods", specifically the claim that a significant number of misinterpretations of such sentences are due to…

Research on Tip of the Tongue (ToT) states has been used to determine whether access to syntactic information precedes access to phonological information. This paper argues that previous studies have used insufficient analyses when investigating the nature of seriality of access. In the first part of this paper, these complex issues are discussed…

A simple experiment about thermal effects in chemical reactors is described, which can be used to illustrate chemical reactor models, the determination and validation of their parameters, and some simple principles of heat transfer and sensor dynamics. It is based in the exothermic reaction between aqueous solutions of sodium thiosulfate and…