Physics

In this paper we present a study of the non-linear effects of anharmonicity of the potential of the simple pendulum. In a theoretical reminder we highlight that anharmonicity of the potential generates additional harmonics and the non-isochronism of oscillations. These phenomena are all the more important as we move away from the oscillations at small angles, which represent the domain of validity of the harmonic approximation. The measurement is apprehended by means of the acquisition box SYSAM-SP5 coupled with the Latis pro software and the Eurosmart pendulum. We show that only a detailed analysis by fitting the recorded curve can provide sufficient accuracy to describe the quadratic evolution of the period as a function of the amplitude of the oscillations. We we can detect the additional harmonics in the oscillations when the amplitude becomes very high.

Despite the negative stereotypes still overshadowing community colleges, scores of freshmen nationwide are deliberately beginning their college careers at these institutions, and the numbers are increasing more than twice as fast as those of four-year schools. Approximately 300,000 of these students take introductory astronomy each year as the last formal exposure to science most of them will ever have, and at least one-third of these students do so at a community or two-year college. The importance of investing in and devoting resources and training to serve this population - everyone, demographically speaking - cannot be overstated. Yet the overwhelming majority of those who do serve this population are lacking in both areas. The community colleges' heavy emphasis on teaching and student success creates both challenges and opportunities that educators must meet head-on using a variety of methods and innovative strategies, teamwork and faculty support systems, and clever workarounds. Here, we introduce both the student and faculty populations, examine some characteristics of both populations, and offer some advice for those looking to teach introductory astronomy at a community college.

Teaching modern physics in high school is of increasingly importance as it can offer students a more realistic and updated vision of the world, and can provide an opportunity to understand the most recent scientific discoveries. In this context, General Relativity (GR) occupies a prominent place, since it is related to astonishing scientific results, such as the first image of a black hole or the discovery of gravitational waves. In this paper we describe an educational proposal aimed at teaching GR in high school in a fun and playful way using the so-called rubber sheet analogy. We present a set of instructions to build a simple and low-cost space-time simulator, and a series of related educational cards that guide the teacher in the implementation of the activities step by step. This work is the result of a long and productive debate among Italian high school teachers who collaborate since many years with the Department of Mathematics and Physics of Roma Tre University in Rome. As our proposal relies on the collaboration with the final users, we believe that it will meet their needs and expectations, and it will help to treat GR in high school more and more over time.

Experimental High Energy Physics Summer School for High Schools, (Liseler İçin Deneysel Yüksek Enerji Fiziği Yaz Okulu - lidyef2018) was held between 9-16 September 2018 at Boğaziçi University, Turkey, with financial support from TÜBİTAK under the 4004 grant 118B491. Out of nearly 700 (11th and 12th grade) applicants, 30 had been selected from all around Turkey. Students were introduced to the fundamentals of high energy physics and performed experiments that demonstrated the techniques of this field, such as a salad-bowl electrostatic accelerator, and a cloud chamber. Here we report on the planning, implementation and the outcomes of the school that can serve as a template for similar activities in the future.

This project of experimental physics practice has consisted of the insertion of CTPM / SJDR high school students in the experimental investigative environment through the application of the concept of Scientific Method. Standardization, or not, in the act of reproduction of an experimental germination practice of seeds of beans, made by students in their respective homes during social isolation, made it possible to obtain distribution curves with events with greater and greater minor correlation between them. In the end, taking advantage of the global context throughout the year 2020, these event distribution curves were used for a conclusive approach as to the effect of social isolation on the "flattening" of the curves of the contaminates by the SARS-Cov-2 virus.

A physical pendulum with variable point of suspension (and, as an outcome, variable inertia moment) is experimentally analysed. In particular, the period of the small oscillations as a function of position of the suspension point is measured using three different methods: a smartphone used both as an independent tool or as a data-logger and commercial photo-gate. The experimental results are successfully compared with theoretical calculations based on the addition of inertia moments and the Steiner theorem.

Several cases of the explanation of the phenomenon of standing waves in strings, there are few experimental measurement tools when demonstrating this phenomenon in a classroom, it is for this reason that we have implemented different forms to show how we can experimentally demonstrate the wave behavior of string vibration, where variations in the length, frequency and tension of the string have been made, with the purpose of showing this phenomenon more generally and clearly for students. In this work, we present the step-by-step the implementation of two experimental procedures of laboratory concerned with the study of wave strings, seeking as a primary objective to show students the experimental way of obtaining and measuring the number of bellies in a string in addition of being able to calculate both fundamentally and experimentally the fundamental frequency of each string by varying both its length and its tension using the resonance frequency. Finally, we present the respective experimental errors, for each of the assemblies and methods carried out in the laboratory to perform the measurements shown and registered in this work.

Popular accounts of exciting discoveries often draw students to physics and astronomy, but at the introductory level it is challenging to connect with these in a meaningful way. The use of real astronomical data in the classroom can help bridge this gap and build valuable quantitative and scientific reasoning skills. This paper presents a strategy for studying Hubble's Law and the accelerating expansion of the universe using actual data. Along with understanding the physical concepts, an explicit goal is to develop skills for analyzing data in terms of a model.

Instruction is unlikely to be effective if instructors do not know the common alternate conceptions of introductory physics students and explicitly take into account common student difficulties in their instructional design. Here, we discuss research involving the Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM) to evaluate one aspect of the pedagogical content knowledge of teaching assistants (TAs): knowledge of introductory students' alternate conceptions in electricity and magnetism as revealed by the CSEM. For each item on the CSEM, the TAs were asked to identify the most common incorrect answer choice selected by introductory physics students if they did not know the correct answer after traditional instruction. Then, we used introductory student CSEM post-test data to assess the extent to which TAs were able to identify the most common alternate conception of introductory students in each question on the CSEM. We find that the TAs were thoughtful when attempting to identify common student difficulties and they enjoyed learning about student difficulties this way. However, they struggled to identify many common difficulties of introductory students that persist after traditional instruction. We discuss specific alternate conceptions that persist after traditional instruction, the extent to which TAs were able to identify them, and results from think-aloud interviews with TAs which provided valuable information regarding why the TAs sometimes selected certain alternate conceptions as the most common but were instead very rare among introductory students. We also discuss how tasks such as the one used in this study can be used in professional development programs to engender productive discussions about the importance of being knowledgeable about student alternate conceptions in order to help students learn.

The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) has been widely used to assess student understanding of introductory mechanics concepts by educators and physics education researchers. Many of the items on the FCI have strong distractor choices corresponding to students' alternate conceptions in mechanics. Instruction is unlikely to be effective if instructors do not explicitly take into account students' initial knowledge state in their instructional design. We discuss research involving the FCI to evaluate the pedagogical content knowledge of instructors of varying teaching experience. For each item on the FCI, instructors were asked to identify the most common incorrect answer choice of introductory physics students. We also discussed the responses individually with some instructors. Then we used the FCI pre-test and post-test data from a large population (~900) of introductory students to assess the pedagogical content knowledge of the physics instructors related to the FCI. While the physics instructors, on average, performance better than random guessing at identifying introductory students' difficulties with FCI content, they did not identify many common difficulties of introductory physics students. Moreover, the ability to correctly identify students' difficulties was not correlated with the teaching experience of instructors.