Sarah Symons

Problem-based learning: undergraduate physics by research

Problem-based learning (PBL) is an established pedagogy in many areas of education for the professions. Although there is an awareness of PBL in many departments of physics in the UK and many claim to include PBL-like instruction to some degree, it has made rather less impact in the physical sciences. This paper describes the aims of PBL and how these are implemented based on our experiences in Physics at the University of Leicester. It is not our purpose to discuss here the parochial details of this programme which are partly historical and adapted to local conditions. (The interested reader can find them on our web site.) Rather we look at general aspects of PBL in Physics in the light of our experience and that of others. In addition to numerous examples of PBL problems, our discussion includes the educational and philosophical underpinnings of PBL, the nature of the ‘problem’ in PBL, issues in facilitation and assessment as well as a brief review of the published evaluations of PBL. Space constraints mean we do not discuss the process of change management.

A Catalogue of Ancient Egyptian Sundials

Ancient Egypt furnishes us with examples of different types of sundial from the New Kingdom (c. 1500 b.c.) onward. Some objects that have been described as sundials are better evidenced as time-keeping devices than others. Hypotheses about the development and even the method of using sundials remain controversial in a few cases. New finds also add to our understanding of the development of sundials in Egypt. Here, we describe an attempt to catalogue ancient Egyptian sundials and the results that are emerging from the investigation.

Classification of Ancient Egyptian Astronomical ‘Diagrams’

The diverse group of 81 numbered ‘monuments’ in Neugebauer and Parker’s Egyptian Astronomical Texts, Volume 3 represents a collection of several different types of document. Arranged chronologically from the Middle Kingdom (c. 2000 B.C.) to the Roman Period (second century A.D.), these texts are more difficult to analyse than when grouped into traditions. Neugebauer and Parker’s system of families presented one basis for classification. This paper presents a second, complementary, way of looking at the documents, with the aim of opening up the possibilities for further analysis of the relationships between the texts and the modes of information transmission for the astronomical information they contain.

An Ancient Egyptian Diagonal Star Table in Mallawi, Egypt

Diagonal star tables (also called diagonal star clocks) are ancient Egyptian texts that relate sequences of star names to 10-day periods of the Egyptian civil year. The surviving examples are from the early Middle Kingdom (around 2100 b.c.), with one partial New Kingdom version (around 1200 b.c.). Geographically, the coffins on which the tables occur are predominantly from the necropolis of Asyut in Middle Egypt, with single examples from each of Thebes, Gebelein, and Aswan being the exceptions. The partial New Kingdom version is unique in layout and location, occurring in a monumental context in the Osireion at Abydos.The number of known diagonal star tables is small: thirteen were discussed in 1960 by Neugebauer and Parker in vol. i of their Egyptian astronomical texts (hereafter EAT 1), the first collection of the genre.1 This number had risen to twenty-three well-described examples by the beginning of 2013,2 with a further two tables whose existence was known but whose details were not.3 This paper describes one of these two tables (the other remains out of the sight of academia in a private collection in Europe).The coffin designated by the siglum S2Mal has been noted in Willems,4 Zitman,5 and Lapp.6 Its original location in the necropolis at Asyut is unknown, but it was apparently excavated by Kamal in the 1913-14 season7 and now is on public display in the Monuments Museum in Mallawi, Egypt. The museum number for the coffin is 567 and the owners name is Hr-htp(w).& The coffin is one of three in the back right corner of the main hall of the museum.The coffin is in a glass case with access to all four sides. The lid is displayed on top of the coffin but raised about eight inches and supported by three wooden frames. The star table itself on the underside of the lid is well spaced and generally clearly legible. The decan (star or asterism) names are rendered in a style typical of Asyut in turquoise with black outlines, and each decan name is followed by a large star determinative in light yellow or white with no central dot. The tables columns are separated by thick turquoise vertical lines outlined in black; thinner black lines separate other regions. The background is yellow and some areas of chipping reveal bright white plaster beneath.The lids three cross-braces or battens are all present and attached to the lid. The plaster and paint on these battens appear darker than the other parts of the table and the signs are largely illegible. However, traces of decan names and separating lines indicate that all three battens belong to this coffin and are correctly placed.The table is laid out in standard format for a diagonal star table.9 It is divided into four quadrants by a horizontal strip with an offering formula across the middle of the table and a vertical band with four figures (mainly obscured by the middle support). The order of figures in the vertical band can still be determined: the sky goddess Nut and Meskhetiu (the Foreleg, our Big Dipper or Plough) above the horizontal strip and Sahu (approximately equivalent to Orion) and Sopdet (Sirius) below. The offering formula starts with the large red dot characteristic of diagonal star tables, followed by an offering to Re in all his places, to Meskhetiu in the northern sky, and a voice offering of bread and beer to Hr-htp(w), the coffins owner. The formula then becomes largely illegible because of a horizontal crack between the lid planks. The middle support also obscures part of the formula.The top row of the table contains the decades of the civil year in red. A further four rows precede the horizontal strip and five rows follow it. This table is therefore the only nine-row diagonal star table so far described. The uneven distribution of rows around the horizontal strip is not unique, but is a feature only previously seen in one other partial table, K6, S23L (see Table 1 for an index of tables) which has thirteen rows. …

Electromagnetic theory by problem-based learning

We describe a course on the propagation of electromagnetic waves that is built around a problem-based learning (PBL) problem. The paper will describe how the problem was integrated into a pre-existing course that was perceived as highly successful (and hence not apparently in need of enhancement) by linking theory with experiment. The problem involves possible methods of searching remotely for leaks in water pipelines crossing a desert region by comparing the dielectric constant of wet and dry sand at various frequencies. The potentially wide-ranging learning objectives are restricted to the various properties of the reflection of plane waves at interfaces. Even so, any one PBL group can carry out only a small subset of the possible experiments in the allotted time. Thus, an interesting feature of the problem is that the reason that the experiments do not appear to give results with textbook accuracy can only be discovered by cooperation amongst the groups. This gives an added focus to the group presentations.