We describe an educational activity that can be completed with mobile media devices in order to understand the working principle of a pair of tuning forks, from the Historical Collection of Physics Instruments of the University of Palermo, and how they were used to explain acoustic interference and beats with the Lissajous optical method. This…

Physics II is an undergraduate course on basic electromagnetism that I teach for engineers, and it includes topics from optics as a natural application. Among the many challenges of conducting video lectures during the local restrictions of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic was finding demonstration material. In this article, I describe how these…

In a 1993 book review, E. Pearlstein asks, "Why don't textbook authors begin their discussion of magnetism by talking about magnets? That's what students have experience with." A similar question can be asked, "Why don't professors have students measure the force between permanent magnets in introductory physics labs?" The…

To stimulate the intellectual curiosity of elementary school students, we conducted a workshop in distance education aimed at exploring the microscopic world inside a cell. In this workshop, elementary school students motivated to learn more on the subject of science analyzed movies of the Brownian motion of micrometer-sized particles suspended in…

The directional feature of Earth's geomagnetic field has been contributing to the technological development and prosperity of humankind since the invention of the magnetic compass navigation centuries ago. Today, for instance, magnetoresistance sensors are commonly used in nanosatellites and unmanned aerial vehicles for high accuracy geomagnetic…

George M. Hopkins (1842-1902) wrote a series of articles on demonstrating physical phenomena in the "Scientific American" during the last years of the 19th century. These were collected in a book, "Experimental Science," that was first published in 1890, with revisions in 1892 and 1902. It must have been well received, for the…

We investigated a very long chain falling from the pile on the edge of a table to the floor both experimentally and theoretically. In this very simple and novel configuration we showed that the velocity of the chain quickly converges to its asymptotic value, and that the steady-state velocity is proportional to the square root of the height of the…

In this article, we present an intriguing experimental exercise that does not fall foul of improper use of instrumentation. The activity is designed as an electronics exercise where the role of the instruments in the measurement of the RC time constant is considered. Essentially, we study the accuracy and precision of a measurement of the RC time…

The measurement of the charge-to-mass ratio, e/m, of the electron is a fundamental part of any study of electricity and magnetism. It is possible to use an apparatus designed to measure e/m for other things, including investigations of electron flow through a near vacuum, measuring a work function, and even exploring some quantum mechanics…

Our first experience of dimension typically comes in the intuitive Euclidean sense: a line is one dimensional, a plane is two dimensional, and a volume is three dimensional. However, following the work of Mandelbrot, systems with a fractional dimension, "fractals," now play an important role in science. The novelty of encountering…

A learner's perception of what a career in physics is like has a major impact on their decision to pursue physics professionally. This decision can also be influenced by a high school student's awareness of issues concerning diversity within the physics community. We surveyed current high school physics students and investigated their perception…

This article presents some simple calculations related to the Future Circular Collider (FCC), which is being studied at CERN as a potential future replacement for the world's largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The aim of this article is to bring particle physics into secondary school classrooms using the physics of the…

For the past dozen years, the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill has been developing a unique, survey-level astronomy curriculum, primarily for undergraduate students, with the goal of significantly boosting STEM enrollments on a national scale, as well as boosting students' technical and research skills. Called "Our Place In…

Shadows produced by sunlight reflected from convex surfaces can be very well defined. This article provides an explanation for this phenomenon as well as a demonstration/lab activity for students to investigate properties of shadows made from sunlight reflected by a curved surface.

Introductory lab courses have been a staple of the physics curriculum for over 100 years. Yet these courses are now poised for change as recent research shows that they do not meet a frequent goal of enhancing student understanding of lecture content. In thinking about how to move forward, a look back at experiment courses in history seems wise.…