In this paper, the inclusion of history and philosophy of science in science teaching is proposed with the goal of depicting pre-service primary teachers' perception of the role of historical experiments in learning science and the nature of science. In order to achieve this, a teaching-learning sequence was designed and conducted in the context…

The Arduino board and its communication with several sensors are becoming more and more popular in the physical science community. They offer inspiring possibilities for learning different physical concepts. In this article, we focused on creating a very practical educational system for experimenting with diffraction of laser light and graphically…

It was planned to introduce online pre-laboratory session activities to a first-year undergraduate physics laboratory course to encourage a minimum level of student preparation for experiments outside the laboratory environment. A group of 16 and 17 year old laboratory work-experience students were tasked to define and design a pre-laboratory…

Describing the motion in a vertical roller coaster loop requires a good understanding of Newton's laws, vectors and energy transformation. This paper describes how first-year students try to make sense of force and acceleration in this example of non-uniform circular motion, which was part of a written exam. In addition to an analysis of the exam…

The instructional lab setting has been found to be dominated by prescribed tasks and pre-prepared lab kits. This was explained by teachers' need to guide students to simultaneously progress through a lab curriculum, which prompts them to standardize the lab experience. Nevertheless, prominent professional associations have persistently called to…

The difficulties students have in blending mathematics and physics are here analyzed, by focusing on the issue of a convergent series. We present an experimental and a theoretical analysis of some phenomena which can be investigated employing series, as the bouncing marble and Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the turtle. Measurements were carried…

Primary level education follows a pedagogy model where literature and science have been historically separated. Natural children processes are disrupted, as learning based on play curiosity is completely transformed by a chalkboard model. Specific experimental realizations can link thinking processes based on science to study problems…

This paper gives an account of an experiment in which thirty-three high school students of ages 17-19 developed spreadsheet numerical models of satellite and space probe motion. The models are free to download. A survey was carried out to find out the students' opinion of the lessons.

This paper gives the solution and analysis of projectile motion in a vacuum if the launch and impact heights are not equal. Formulas for the maximum horizontal range and the corresponding angle are derived. An Excel application that simulates the motion is also presented, and the result of an experiment in which 38 secondary school students…

We have developed two kinds of optical experiments: color mixture and fluorescence, using mini-torches with light emitting diodes (LEDs) that emit three primary colors. Since the tools used in the experiments are simple and inexpensive, students can easily retry and develop the experiments by themselves. As well as giving an introduction to basic…