During the coronavirus pandemic, there have been significant challenges in the remote teaching and demonstration of experiments, especially those that require laboratory testing equipment. With a desire to give students a feel for our materials laboratory on open days and allow them to gain a deeper understanding of what materials science and…

A low-cost, time-resolved spectroscopy experiment appropriate for third year physical chemistry students is presented. Students excite o-methyl red in basic solutions with a laser pointer and use a modular spectrometer with a CCD array detector to monitor the transient spectra as the higher-energy cis conformer of the molecule converts back to the…

A lab activity for teaching physics students the fundamentals of statistical analysis during the first few weeks of instruction is described. This activity involves students timing a pulse of light generated by an Arduino device of fixed duration with individual timers (e.g. stopwatch, iPhone timer). To select the most precise timing methods and…

This study aims to examine students' reasoning based on the model in each laboratory work style and find the effect on scientific attitude and student activity. This study uses a quantitative approach with the experimental method. The study was conducted in three classes with different lab work styles. Arduino and sensors were used as a…

The present study uses the intuitive rules theory as a framework to examine whether some of the difficulties in dealing with errors and uncertainties observed among students in the university physics laboratory can stem from their use of intuitive rules. The study also examines the relationship between the use of intuitive rules and laboratory…

Because she had been blind since birth, we knew that our new student, Cricket, would be unable to make the necessary measurements needed to get any meaningful lab data while all of the other students would be able to use highly accurate commercial Vernier calipers. All we had on loan for Cricket was a Brailled plastic tactile meter stick with low…

In a recent report, the American Association of Physics Teachers has developed an updated set of recommendations for curriculum of undergraduate physics labs. This document focuses on six major themes: constructing knowledge, modeling, designing experiments, developing technical and practical laboratory skills, analyzing and visualizing data, and…

Light irradiance measurements are important for students grappling with abstract optical phenomena such as the inverse square law, polarization, diffraction, interference, and spectroscopy. A variety of commercial light sensors are available from scientific vendors such as the CI-6504A from PASCO scientific and the LS-BTA from Vernier Software and…

Systematic errors can cause measurements to deviate from the actual value of the quantity being measured. Faulty equipment (such as a meterstick that is not marked correctly), inaccurate calibration of measuring devices (such as a scale to measure mass that has not been properly zeroed), and improper use of equipment by the experimenter (such as…

Integration of technology, social learning and scientific models offers pedagogical opportunities for science education. A particularly interesting area is thermal science, where students often struggle with abstract concepts, such as heat. In taking on this conceptual obstacle, we explore how hand-held infrared (IR) visualization technology can…

The study of chromatin constitutes one of the most active research fields in life sciences, being subject to constant revisions that continuously redefine the state of the art in its knowledge. As every other rapidly changing field, chromatin biology requires clear and straightforward educational strategies able to efficiently translate such a…

Science anxiety, which is one of the affective dimensions in science learning, is one of the factors affecting success in Science and has been studied for 35 years. The existence of considerable negative attitudes towards Physics courses, which is one of the basic branches of Science, is a fact. This research has been designed to identify the…

We consider a volume of air trapped over a glycerol column in a eudiometer. We demonstrate that there is an approximately linear relationship between the volume of trapped air and the height of the glycerol column. Simply by moving the eudiometer up and down, we cause the glycerol-column height and trapped-air volume to vary. The plot of volume…

The rapid compression or expansion of a gas in a plastic syringe is a poor approximation of an adiabatic process. Heat exchange with the walls of the syringe brings the gas to equilibrium in an amount of time that is not significantly greater than the length of the compression or expansion itself. Despite this limitation, it is still possible to…

The speed of sound is a physical property that can be measured easily in the lab. However, finding an inexpensive and intuitive way for students to determine this speed has been more involved. The introduction of affordable consumer-grade high-speed cameras (such as the Exilim EX-FC100) makes conceptually simple experiments feasible. Since the…