No Arabic abstract
Recently in the authors country Japan, the unpopularity of natural science among children has been a serious problem. Especially, physics is unpopular because physics requires mathematics. One of the reasons of this problem is that teachers themselves do not like physics. We focus our attention on the ``teachers in embryo, namely the undergraduate students in a course for school teachers. We conducted a questionnaire and a quiz on the undergraduate students in the first grade of the Department of Science Education, Ibaraki University. We report the result of the questionnaire and the quiz, and also make suggestions to improve the present situation.
Cookbook style laboratory tasks have long been criticised for the lack of critical and independent thought that students need in order to complete them. We present an account of how we transformed a cookbook lab to a genuine inquiry experiment in first year physics. Crucial features of the work were visits to see other teaching laboratories, understanding student preparedness and the selection of an appropriate experiment to develop. The new two session laboratory work is structured so students make decisions related to the method of a basic experiment in the first session and then have freedom to investigate any aspect they wish to in the second. Formative feedback on laboratory notebook keeping is provided by short online activities.
As part of a larger research project into massively open online courses (MOOCs), we have investigated student background, as well as student participation in a physics MOOC with a laboratory component. Students completed a demographic survey and the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation at the beginning of the course. While the course is still actively running, we have tracked student participation over the first five weeks of the eleven-week course.
We formulate a problem on diamagnetic levitation, which may be suitable for specialized high-school or first-year students in physical sciences. We guide the students, step-by-step, through the physics of diamagnetic levitation. The calculations are simplified by assuming a ring-shaped geometry of the diamagnetic object residing above a magnetic dipole. This problem was originally intended for the International Physics Olympiad 2016 (IPHO 2016), but was finally deemed surplus and therefore not set.
The classic brachistrochrone problem is standard material in intermediate mechanics. Many variations exist including some accessible to introductory students. While a quantitative solution isnt feasible in introductory classes, qualitative discussions can be very beneficial since kinematics, Newtons Laws, energy conservation and motion along curved trajectories all play a role. In this work, we describe an activity focusing on a qualitative understanding of the brachistochrone and examine the performance of freshmen, juniors and graduate students. The activity can be downloaded at https://w3.physics.arizona.edu/undergrad/teaching-resources .
The Physics Inventory of Quantitative Literacy (PIQL), a reasoning inventory under development, aims to assess students physics quantitative literacy at the introductory level. The PIQLs design presents the challenge of isolating types of mathematical reasoning that are independent of each other in physics questions. In its current form, the PIQL spans three principle reasoning subdomains previously identified in mathematics and physics education research: ratios and proportions, covariation, and signed (negative) quantities. An important psychometric objective is to test the orthogonality of these three reasoning subdomains. We present results from exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and module analysis that inform interpretations of the underlying structure of the PIQL from a student viewpoint, emphasizing ways in which these results agree and disagree with expert categorization. In addition to informing the development of existing and new PIQL assessment items, these results are also providing exciting insights into students quantitative reasoning at the introductory level.