The aim of this research is to take a fresh look at the physical science concepts that Year 3 students struggle with. In this work, the responses of over 8,000 middle-primary-aged students to a range of physics, space science and chemistry questions were evaluated. The questions covered a number of topics ranging from selecting and using simple…

We consider the operation of the hypothetical mechanical vehicle driven by an engine powered by small rockets introduced by P D Hanstead in the inaugural volume of this journal. Hanstead arrived at three contradictory conclusions regarding the change in velocity should some of the rockets malfunction at a particular time. This thought experiment…

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is a National Aeronautics and Space Administration--European Space Agency collaborative mission to test the feasibility of defending Earth from a catastrophic asteroid impact by using a spacecraft to deflect the asteroid away from the planet. Launched on Nov. 23, 2021, the DART spacecraft will intercept…

Physics is not a very popular subject at German schools, and several studies indicate that girls are less interested than boys in the traditional physics curriculum. To address this problem, physics education should be up to date, context oriented, interesting for girls and boys, and emerge from their everyday life. The ROSE study shows that…

Data from the Kepler satellite were analysed using the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes database. With the participation of 53 students, we determined the parameters of the HAT-P-7b (Kepler-2) exoplanet system (transit duration, planet-to-star radius ratio, orbital period, semi-major axis and star mass). We used approaches that are easy to…

At a conference on educational physics, someone described a series of multiple-choice problems to test students' ideas about various mechanical phenomena. One of the problems questioned students' conceptions about the shape of the Earth's orbit in the solar system. The question was as follows: "Which of the following schematic illustrations…

Field trip activities are often considered additional activities and are considered recreational activities rather than ones that teach science effectively to students. Field trip activities are one form of effective experience-based learning to train pre-service teachers in the outdoor environment. This study attempted to describe the design of…

Similar to how stealth materials were developed to reduce the radar wave energy returning from an aircraft, here we explore a low-cost laboratory demonstration that uses similar principles to prevent detection of an object by an ultrasonic sensor. This demonstration setup can be used as a starting point to encourage students to explore the surface…

In the transition from classical to modern physics, the idea of taking some certain quantities as distinct or bounded values and keeping the rest continuous has proved useful in dealing with many problems. In this paper we assume an upper bound on the velocity of classical particles and indicate that applying this assumption to electromagnetism…

Most likely a large number of students have heard of the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis), and know that they are a phenomenon in the sky. Although they may not have seen the Northern Lights, most have probably seen other phenomena in the sky, such as a rainbow, shooting star, or super moon. These experiences provide an opportunity for students…

This paper describes the results of a survey administered to members of the American Association of Physics Teachers and the National Earth Science Teachers Association to measure the nature and frequency of the integration of Earth and space science (E&SS) concepts into physics courses, as well as the need and interest of physics teachers to…

Many large-lecture introductory science courses for nonscience majors do not have a lab component and hence do not provide much opportunity for students to engage in the practice of science. I have developed a new instructional activity called Dorm Room Labs that enables students to conduct hands-on activities as homework (or dorm room work) to…

The sensation of weightlessness is common to an astronaut in a spaceship orbiting Earth and to a person aboard a freely falling elevator. This paper presents a detailed treatment of this commonality by showing that a spaceship orbiting Earth is in permanent free fall toward the planet, appropriate for use in the introductory classroom.

In this study, the nuts and bolts of designing and building a high powered rocket have been presented. A computer simulation program called RockSim was used to design the rocket. Simulation results are consistent with time variations of altitude, velocity, and acceleration obtained in the actual flight. The actual drag coefficient was determined…

Quadcopters (also known as "drones") do not fly in vacuum. This is obvious enough that experimenting on one in a vacuum chamber would seem rather uninteresting, but there is one question that may be usefully addressed by such an experiment: the mechanism for yaw control. Quadcopters control yaw (rotation about the vertical axis) by…