Instructional videos are commonly used in both remote and in-campus curriculum. In order to investigate students' experience when learning with online instructional videos, we adapted a method called "UX curve" from the user experience studies in industrial design. In this paper, we introduce the procedure and data processing method of…

For single-slit diffraction and double-slit interference experiments, commercially made slits can be the most expensive parts, especially since the prices of laser pointers have become very low. One option is to use a razor blade to cut slits in either paint or electrical tape on microscope slides. However, this takes practice, and there is some…

Two misconceptions about the mechanism of image formation in the human eye are common among students and even in textbooks and other teaching materials. The first attributes all refraction to the eye lens; the second treats the eye as a pinhole camera. To reduce these persistent conceptions of students, a series of simple experiments is presented…

The aim of this study is to illustrate how to enrich resource rooms with specialized instructional materials for the concepts of "transparent," "semi-transparent," and "non-transparent." Given the special situations of students with learning disabilities, the specialized instructional materials use their own avatars…

While physics is often promoted as being for everyone, its cultural narrative, i.e., what physicists do and who they are, has been and continues to be created by a dominant social group. As such, many students who come from marginalized backgrounds in physics are required to fit themselves into its narrow culture that does not reflect who they are…

Quantum physics is the basis for many technologies that are a fundamental part of our daily lives (e.g., lasers) or that may become so in the future (e.g., quantum cryptography and quantum computing). Because of this, quantum physics is now a central aspect of many countries' secondary school curricula. In this article, we present the design and…

In many high school teaching materials the force on a current-carrying wire in a magnetic field is discussed using an idea based on a so-called "catapult field" (cf. Fig. 1), an engaging depiction of magnetic forces, albeit one which, to the best of our knowledge, has neither been used in college-level educational material or scrutinized…

Increasingly, the science education community has recognized the need for curriculum resources that support student development of authentic scientific practices, rather than focusing exclusively on content knowledge. This paper proposes a tool for teachers and researchers to assess the degree to which certain curriculum resources and lessons…

The ground-breaking image of a black hole's event horizon, which captured the public's attention and imagination in April 2019, was captured using the power of interferometry: many separate telescopes working together to observe the cosmos in incredible detail. Many recent astrophysical discoveries that have revolutionized the scientific…

The peak position of the spectral density for blackbody radiation is given by the Wien displacement law. Within introductory physics materials it is often stated, or implied through example, that the color of the light emitted from a blackbody, such as the Sun, can be ascertained from knowledge of the position of that peak in the spectral density.…

We constructed a low-cost experimental kit consisting of a compact 532-nm diode laser, optics, and optomechanical components that arrange on a small honeycomb breadboard. The kit is flexible enough to construct five typical wave optic experiments, e.g., double-slit interference, Michelson and Mach-Zehnder interferometers, diffraction, and Malus's…

Cost-effective, custom home experiment kits were developed and used for remote teaching of first-semester introductory physics labs. The kit experiments were designed to match the existing onsite lab course learning goals. A revised group project approach optimized for remote use was also developed that leverages the kits. Student survey results…

Electromagnetism, along with mechanics, is one of the most fundamental disciplines in physics, and the magnetic force is one of the most easily accessible forces existing in nature. Magnets are often used as science teaching aids and are readily available from a young age; the forces of these magnets are first dealt with in NGSS (Next Generation…

Current K-12 and undergraduate students have grown up with constant exposure to visual popular culture (e.g., movies, TV programs, graphic novels, etc.). Because youth find pop culture references in the classroom to be engaging, many science and engineering instructors have shown that examples found in visual pop culture can be used to teach…

In this paper we examine how different types of participants in a physics Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) tend to use the existing course resources. We use data from the 2013 offering of the Massive Open Online Course 8.MReVx designed by the RELATE (REsearch in Learning Assessing and Tutoring Effectively) Group at the Massachusetts Institute of…