Physics

Thermal physics is a core course requirement for most physics degrees and encompasses both thermodynamics and statistical mechanics content. However, the primary content foci of thermal physics courses vary across universities. This variation can make creation of materials or assessment tools for thermal physics difficult. To determine the scope and content variability of thermal physics courses across institutions, we distributed a survey to over 140 institutions to determine content priorities from faculty and instructors who have taught upper-division thermodynamics and/or statistical mechanics. We present results from the survey, which highlight key similarities and differences in thermal physics content coverage across institutions. Though we see variations in content coverage, we found 9 key topical areas covered by all respondents in their upper-division thermal physics courses. We discuss implications of these findings for the development of instructional tools and assessments that are useful to the widest range of institutions and physics instructors.

A java-based graphical tool for drawing Feynman diagrams is presented. It differs from similar existing tools in various respects. For example, it is based on models, consisting of particles (lines) and (optionally) vertices, each of which can be given their individual properties (line style, color, arrows, label, etc.). The diagrams can be exported in any standard image format, or as PDF. Aside from its plain graphical aspect, the goal of FeynGame is also educative, as it can check a Feynman diagrams validity. This provides the basis to play games with diagrams, for example. Here we describe on such game where a given set of initial and final states must be connected through a Feynman diagram within a given interaction model.

Distance education has expanded significantly over the last decade, but the natural sciences have lagged in the implementation of this instructional mode. The abrupt onset of the COVID-19 pandemic left educational institutions scrambling to adapt curricula to distance modalities. With projected effects lasting through the 2020--21 academic year, this problem will not go away soon. Analysis of the literature has elucidated the costs and benefits of, as well as obstacles to, the implementation of e-learning, with a focus on undergraduate physics education. Physics faculty report that a lack of time to learn about research-driven innovation is their primary barrier to implementing it. In response, this paper is intended to help physics lecturers and lab instructors re-think their courses now that distance learning is far more prevalent due to the pandemic. This paper serves as an all-in-one guide of recommendations for successful distanced educational practices, with an emphasis on smartphones and social media. These technologies were chosen for their utility in a virtual environment. Additionally, this paper can be used as a resource for university administrators to adapt to the changing needs associated with new teaching modalities.

Flipped classroom approach has gained attention for educational practitioners and researchers in recent years. In contrast with traditional classroom, in flipped classroom, students gather basic knowledge out of class, so that class time can be used by them to engage in active learning experience. While rich body of research has been investigated the effectiveness of flipped classroom, yet little is known about student's perspective towards the implementation of flipped classroom, especially for non-mathematics students that enroll statistics course. This study aims to describe pre-service English language teacher's perceptions with regard to the implementation of the learning approach in Statistics for Research course. Online questionnaire is employed in capturing student's perceptions. Students were generally positive regarding the implementation of flipped classroom. Although, the students still had difficulty with regard to online learning environment, they felt that many features of flipped classroom are helpful for their learning experiences.

In this paper we suggest to anticipate the introduction of concepts such as quantum state and the operators connected to their transformations well in advance of what is usually done.

This study investigates how students and researchers shape their knowledge and perception of educational topics. The mindset or forma mentis of 159 Italian high school students and of 59 international researchers in STEM are reconstructed through forma mentis networks, i.e., cognitive networks of concepts connected by free associations and enriched with sentiment labels. The layout of conceptual associations between positively/negatively/neutrally perceived concepts is informative on how people build their own mental constructs or beliefs about specific topics. Researchers displayed mixed positive/neutral mental representations of ``teacher'', ``student'' and, ``scientist''. Students' conceptual associations of ``scientist'' were highly positive and largely non-stereotypical, although links about the ``mad scientist'' stereotype persisted. Students perceived ``teacher'' as a complex figure, associated with positive aspects like mentoring/knowledge transmission but also to negative sides revolving around testing and grading. ``School'' elicited stronger differences between the two groups. In the students' mindset, ``school'' was surrounded by a negative emotional aura or set of associations, indicating an anxious perception of the school setting, mixing scholastic concepts, anxiety-eliciting words, STEM disciplines like maths and physics, and exam-related notions. Researchers' positive stance of ``school'' included concepts of fun, friendship, and personal growth instead. Along the perspective of Education Research, the above results are discussed as quantitative evidence for test- and STEM anxiety co-occurring in the way Italian students perceive education places and their actors. Detecting these patterns in student populations through forma mentis networks offers new, simple to gather yet detailed knowledge for future data-informed intervention policies and action research.

In this activity, we describe how the video game Fortnite provides a nice opportunity for students to think about chemistry. The game has a survival system based on the acquisition and use of items, which has interesting chemical and physical properties. In addition, the game also provides an important platform of crafting and base building and open discussion on materials.

Writing is an integral part of the process of science. In the undergraduate physics curriculum, the most common place that students engage with scientific writing is in lab classes, typically through lab notebooks, reports, and proposals. There has not been much research on why and how we include writing in physics lab classes, and instructors may incorporate writing for a variety of reasons. Through a broader study of multiweek projects in advanced lab classes, we have developed a framework for thinking about and understanding the role of writing in lab classes. This framework defines and describes the breadth of goals for incorporating writing in lab classes, and is a tool we can use to begin to understand why, and subsequently how, we teach scientific writing in physics.

The shape of liquid surface in a rotating frame depends on the angular velocity. In this experiment, a fluid in a rectangular container with a small width is placed on a rotating table. A smartphone fixed to the rotating frame simultaneously records the fluid surface with the camera and also, thanks to the built-in gyroscope, the angular velocity. When the table starts rotating the surface evolves and develops a parabolic shape. Using video analysis we obtain the surface's shape: concavity of the parabole and height of the vertex. Experimental results are compared with theoretical predictions. This problem contributes to improve the understanding of relevant concepts in fluid dynamics.

Our investigation of 353 faculty-produced multiple-choice Think-Pair-Share questions leads to key insights into faculty members' ideas about the discipline representations and intellectual tasks that could engage learners on key topics in physics and astronomy. The results of this work illustrate that, for many topics, there is a lack of variety in the representations featured, intellectual tasks posed, and levels of complexity fostered by the questions faculty develop. These efforts motivated and informed the development of two frameworks: (1) a curriculum characterization framework that allows us to systematically code active learning strategies in terms of the discipline representations, intellectual tasks, and reasoning complexity that an activity offers the learner; and (2) a curriculum development framework that guides the development of activities deliberately focused on increasing learners' discipline fluency. We analyze the faculty-produced Think-Pair-Share questions with our curriculum characterization framework, then apply our curriculum development framework to generate (1) Fluency-Inspiring Questions, a more pedagogically powerful extension of a well-established instructional strategy, and (2) Student Representation Tasks, a brand new type of instructional activity in astronomy that shifts the responsibility for generating appropriate representations onto the learners. We explicitly unpack and provide examples of Fluency-Inspiring Questions and Student Representation Tasks, detailing their usage of Pedagogical Discipline Representations coupled with novel question and activity formats.