A cost-effective method has been developed with utmost efficiency for the determination of density of a liquid. The experimental setup for this purpose is a Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) cylinder fitted with an overflow spout, a volume measuring cylinder, a wooden block along with a hook and a known mass taken from scientific weight box. For this…

An easy circuit for measuring the power of a solar panel in physics classroom by using the microcontroller Arduino will be introduced in this article. The measured data is transferred via Bluetooth to the smartphone app 'phyphox' where it is displayed graphically. The circuitry enables measuring the power of a solar panel in different situations…

We present a thermodynamics experiment suitable for first year undergraduate students employing Stirling Engines to create a demonstration of energy transformation and to measure the mechanical efficiency of such engines. Using an inexpensive transparent chambered Stirling Engine, students can connect concepts such as the theoretical…

This paper presents the case for how students can be helped to increase their scientific vocation by experimental work and the introduction of particle physics into pre-university studies. These two ideas are the two main lines of work of the ADMIRA initiative, which has been created by individuals belonging to different and complementary…

We have designed a simple Arduino-based experiment to study free fall. The experimental data associated to the free and vertical fall movement of a brass saucer are gathered with the help of an ultrasonic distance sensor and an Arduino board. The position-time curves obtained from different initial heights are then plotted and the acceleration of…

For conducting laboratory experiments on Fresnel diffraction, the use of a simple point light source from an LED and the application of a modern smartphone for photographing the diffraction patterns are proposed. The developed devices allow the experiments to be carried out under normal laboratory lighting.

When the road is wet (there is a water layer on the road surface), the road marks become blurred and drivers are distracted. We discuss the contributing processes and identify which processes are dominant to the occurrence of this phenomenon. Modelling and a simple experiment demonstrate that the dominant processes are: (a) refraction of light by…

The so-called "Rutherford's experiment," as it is outlined in many physics textbooks, is a case in point of the flaws around the history at the educational level of one of the decisive event of modern physics: the discovery that the atom has a nucleus. This paper shows that this alleged experiment is a very approximate and very partial…

There are different forms to introduce/illustrate the energy concepts for the basic physics students. The explosive seed dispersal mechanism found in a variety of trees could be one of them. Sibipiruna trees carry out fruits (pods) who show such an explosive mechanism. During the explosion, the pods throw out seeds several meters away. In this…

In this article, we outline a demonstration that is relatively simple to perform but whose results require a quite subtle interpretation of Faraday's Law. When a very small magnet is dropped through a coil it can tumble as it falls leading to 'spikes' in the measured emf signal. The experiment, and demonstration, can be used in an introductory…

This work proposes simple experiments to introduce some fundamental concepts of the measurement area. It associates theory and practice through a strategy where the students create a real temperature data set with an Arduino board and three LM35DZ sensors and later use mathematical software to identify theoretical concepts as measurement accuracy…

Excel spreadsheets are used as an excellent tool in physics laboratory experiments related to wave optics. This paper presents a simple way to simulate diffraction of waves through a slit using Excel spreadsheets without any tedious programming. These simulations are used to visualize the effect of variation of different parameters such as number…

Charging a capacitor with a photovoltaic module is an experiment which reveals a lot about the modules characteristics. It is customary to represent these characteristics with an equivalent circuit whose elements represent its physical parameters. The behavior of a photovoltaic module is very similar to that of a single cell but the electric…

We have developed much simpler cloud chambers that use only ice and cooking salt instead of the dry ice or ice gel pack needed for the cloud chambers produced in our previous work. The observed alpha-ray particle tracks are as clear as those observed using our previous cloud chambers. The tracks can be observed continuously for about 20?min, and…

Video analysis with a 30 Hz frame rate is the standard tool in physics education. The development of affordable high-speed-cameras has extended the capabilities of the tool for much smaller time scales to the 1 ms range, using frame rates of typically up to 1000 frames s[superscript -1], allowing us to study transient physics phenomena happening…