A standard problem for physics students is to calculate or measure the acceleration of an object down an inclined plane. Additional information can be obtained by measuring the angular acceleration as well as the linear acceleration. An experiment is described where a billiard ball was filmed as it rolled down an inclined plane at different…

The aim of this paper is to investigate the stability of a bottle filled with different volumes of water, and to determine the angle at which it topples over for each volume of water. Data for the angle at which the bottle toppled were gathered experimentally using a cylindrical 1 litre bottle, and two theoretical models were then developed,…

In this paper, we report on an experimental activity for discussing the concepts of speed, instantaneous speed and acceleration, generally introduced in first year university courses of calculus or physics. Rather than developing the ideas of calculus and using them to explain these basic concepts for the study of motion, we led 82 first year…

The paper focuses on student-teachers' geometric diagrams to mediate the emergence of different proofs for a geometric proposition. For Peirce, a diagram is an icon that explicitly and implicitly represents the deep structural relations among the parts of the object that it stands for. Geometric diagrams can be seen as epistemological tools to…

This article documents the classroom mathematical practices observed in a collegiate level teacher education course related to the circle topic. The course, which was prepared as design research, utilized a dynamic geometry environment which influenced the type and nature of the evolved mathematical practices. The study uses emergent perspective…

The aim of the present article is to focus on the operational aspects referring to the actions--strategies and on the defined modalities of establishing educational objectives/competences. In the achievement of our work a special attention has been paid to the operational aspects of the learning process of the optical phenomena. There were carried…

Research on animals, infants, children, and adults provides evidence that distinct cognitive systems underlie navigation and object recognition. Here we examine whether and how these systems interact when children interpret 2D edge-based perspectival line drawings of scenes and objects. Such drawings serve as symbols early in development, and they…

An influential theory of spatial navigation states that the boundary shape of an environment is preferentially encoded over and above other spatial cues, such that it is impervious to interference from alternative sources of information. We explored this claim with 3 intradimensional--extradimensional shift experiments, designed to examine the…

This study aimed on the process of teaching taxicab geometry, a non-Euclidean geometry that is easy to understand and similar to Euclidean geometry with its axiomatic structure. In this regard, several teaching activities were designed such as measuring taxicab distance, defining a taxicab circle, finding a geometric locus in taxicab geometry, and…

Proponents of a geometric module have argued that instances of young children's use of features as well as geometry to reorient can be explained by a two-stage process. In this model, only the first stage is a true reorientation, accomplished by using geometric information alone; features are considered in a second stage using association (Lee,…

In this paper I report a lengthy episode from a teaching experiment in which 15-Year 12 Greek students negotiated their definitions of tangent line to a function graph. The experiment was designed for the purpose of introducing students to the notion of derivative and to the general case of tangent to a function graph. Its design was based on…

In this paper we aim to contribute to the process of networking between theoretical frames in mathematics education by means of forging connections between Constructionism and Instrumental Theory to discuss a design for instrumentalisation. We specifically focus on instrumentalisation, i.e. the ways in which students make changes to digital…

The Timepix hybrid silicon pixel detector has been used to investigate the inverse square law of radiation from a point source as a demonstration of the CERN [at] school detector kit capabilities. The experiment described uses a Timepix detector to detect the gamma rays emitted by an [superscript 241]Am radioactive source at a number of different…

Nowadays, computer aided design (CAD) is widely used by designers. Would children learn to draw more easily and more efficiently if they were taught with computerised tools? To answer this question, we made an experiment designed to compare two methods for children to do the same drawing: the classical "pen and paper" method and a CAD…

This study hypothesized that increased intensity of graphic information, presented in computer-generated instruction, could be differentially beneficial for students with hyperactivity and inattention by improving their ability to sustain attention and hold information in-mind. To this purpose, 18 2nd-4th grade students, recruited from general…