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arXiv2015

The Role of Dimensional Analysis in Teaching Physics

Dimensional analysis is a simple qualitative method for determining essential connections between physical quantities. It is applicable to a multitude of physics problems, many of which canbe introduced early on in a university physics curriculum. Despite the relative simplicity of theapproach, it is rarely included in physics curricula. Here, we apply dimensional analysis to find the radiated power from an electric dipole. Employing dimensional analysis, we demonstrate a straightforward way to derive the latter without the need for complex mathematical treatments.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2013

Developing Tutorials for Advanced Physics Students: Processes and Lessons Learned

When education researchers describe newly developed curricular materials, they typically concentrate on the research base behind their design, and the efficacy of the final products, but do not highlight the initial stages of creating the actual materials. With the aim of providing useful information for faculty engaged in similar projects, we describe here our development of a set of in-class tutorials for advanced undergraduate electrodynamics students, and discuss factors that influenced their initial design and refinement. Among the obstacles to be overcome was the investigation of student difficulties within the short time frame of our project, and devising ways for students to engage in meaningful activities on advanced-level topics within a single 50-minute class period. We argue for a process that leverages faculty experience and classroom observations, and present several guidelines for tutorial development and implementation in upper-division physics classrooms.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2013

CosMO - A Cosmic Muon Observer Experiment for Students

What are cosmic particles and where do they come from? These are questions which are not only fascinating for scientists in astrophysics. With the CosMO experiment (Cosmic Muon Observer) students can autonomously study these particles. They can perform their own hands-on experiments to become familiar with modern scientific working methods and to obtain a direct insight into astroparticle physics. In this contribution we present the experimental setup and possible measurements. The detector consists of three scintillator boxes. Events are triggered and read out by a data acquisition board developed for the QuarkNet Project. With a Python program running on a netbook under Linux, the trigger and data taking conditions can be defined. The program displays the particle rates in real-time and stores the data for offline analysis. Possible student experiments are the measurement of cosmic particle rates dependent on the zenith angle, the distribution of geometrical size of particle showers, and the lifetime of muons. Twenty CosMO detectors have been built at DESY. They are used within the German outreach network Netzwerk Teilchenwelt at 15 astroparticle-research institutes and universities for project work with students.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2013

Experimental determination of circuit equations

Kirchhoff's laws offer a general, straightforward approach to circuit analysis. Unfortunately, use of the laws becomes impractical for all but the simplest of circuits. This work presents a novel method of analyzing direct current resistor circuits. It is based on an approach developed to model complex networks, making it appropriate for use on large, complicated circuits. It is unique in that it is not an analytic method. It is based on experiment, yet the approach produces the same circuit equations obtained by more traditional means.

physics.class-ph↗

arXiv2013

Visualizing Angular Momentum Eigenstates using the Spin Coherent State Representation

Orbital angular momentum eigenfunctions are readily understood in terms of spherical harmonic wavefunctions. However, the quantum mechanical phenomenon of spin is often said to be mysterious and hard to visualize, with no classical analogue. Many textbooks give a heuristic and somewhat unsatisfying picture of a precessing spin vector. Here we advocate for the "spin wavefunction" in the spin coherent state representation as a striking, elegant, and mathematically meaningful visual tool. We also demonstrate that cartographic projections such as the Hammer projection are useful for visualizing wavefunctions defined on spherical surfaces.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2013

Problem Roulette: Studying Introductory Physics in the Cloud

Problem Roulette (PR) is a web-based study service at the University of Michigan that offers random-within-topic access to a large library of past exam problems in introductory physics courses. Built on public-private cloud computing infrastructure, PR served nearly 1000 students during Fall 2012 term, delivering more than 60,000 problem pages. The service complements that of commercial publishing houses by offering problems authored by local professors. We describe the service architecture, including reporting and analytical capabilities, and present an initial evaluation of the impact of its use. Among roughly 500 students studying electromagnetism, we find that the 229 students who worked fifty or more problems over the term outperformed their complement by 0.40 grade points (on a 4.0 scale). This improvement partly reflects a selection bias that better students used the service more frequently. Adjusting for this selection bias by using overall grade point average (GPA) as a classifier, we find a grade point improvement of 0.22 for regular PR users, significantly above the random noise level of 0.04. Simply put, students who worked one or more additional problem per weekday earned nearly a quarter-letter average grade improvement irrespective of GPA. Student comments emphasize the importance of randomness in helping them synthesize concepts. The PR source code is publicly available on the bitbucket repository.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2014

An inquiry-based laboratory on friction

Sliding friction is usually introduced in high school, but rarely through activities in laboratory. A qualitative introduction to friction is presented by proposing exploration of different kind of materials in order to suggest which aspects can be relevant and which interaction is involved. Different quantitative experiments are proposed for studying Leonardo's laws for friction. The learning path was tested with two high school classes during an instruction trip at department. Students were engaged in the inquiry-based introductory activity and seemed to realize with care the measurements. However, the analysis of their reports shows some learning difficulties.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2014

Active learning in pre-service science teacher education

We report a course on teaching in physics lab for teachers enrolled in Formative Active Training, which actually allows to obtain the teacher qualification in Italy. The course was designed with the purpose of showing in practice what means active learning in physics and how effective activities can be realized in practice. Two different type of teachers attended to the course, a small group, with physics or mathematics degree, for teacher qualification in secondary school of second grade (age 14-19) and a more numerous group for qualification in secondary school of first grade (age 11-14), usually with a different science degree such as biology, environmental sciences and so on. We compare this training in physics lab between the two groups and with other experiences we performed in previous years in pre-service education and updating courses for teachers in-service.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2013

Participation And performance In 8.02x Electricity And Magnetism: The First Physics MOOC From MITx

Massive Open Online Courses are an exciting new avenue for instruction and research, yet they are full of unknowns. In the Spring of 2013, MITx released its first introductory physics MOOC through the edX platform, generating a total enrollment of 43,000 students from around the world. We describe the population of participants in terms of their age, gender, level of education, and country of origin, highlighting both the diversity of 8.02x enrollees as well as gender gap and retention. Using three midterm exams and the final as waypoints, we highlight performance by different demographic subpopulations and their retention rates. Our work is generally aimed at making a bridge between available MOOC data and topics associated with the Physics Education Research community.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2013

Transforming High School Physics with Modeling and Computation

The Engage to Excel (PCAST) report, the National Research Council's Framework for K-12 Science Education, and the Next Generation Science Standards all call for transforming the physics classroom into an environment that teaches students real scientific practices. This work describes the early stages of one such attempt to transform a high school physics classroom. Specifically, a series of model-building and computational modeling exercises were piloted in a ninth grade Physics First classroom. Student use of computation was assessed using a proctored programming assignment, where the students produced and discussed a computational model of a baseball in motion via a high-level programming environment (VPython). Student views on computation and its link to mechanics was assessed with a written essay and a series of think-aloud interviews. This pilot study shows computation's ability for connecting scientific practice to the high school science classroom.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2014

A pilot experience in physics laboratory for a professional school

The reform of the upper secondary school in Italy has recently introduced physics in the curricula of professional schools, in realities where it was previously absent. Many teachers, often with a temporary position, are obliged to teaching physics in schools where the absence of the laboratory is added to the lack of interest of students who feel this matter as very far from their personal interests and from the preparation for the work which could expect from a professional school. We report a leaning path for introducing students to the measurement of simple physical quantities, which continued with the study of some properties of matter (volume, mass, density) and ending with some elements of thermodynamics. Educational materials designed in order to involve students in an active learning, actions performed for improving the quality of laboratory experience and difficulties encountered are presented. Finally, we compare the active engagement of these students with a similar experience performed in a very different vocational school.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2014

From evaluation to learning: Some aspects of designing a cyber-university

Research is described on a system for web-assisted education and how it is used to deliver on-line drill questions, automatically suited to individual students. The system can store and display all of the various pieces of information used in a class-room (slides, examples, handouts, drill items) and give individualized drills to participating students. The system is built on the basic theme that it is for learning rather than evaluation. Experimental results shown here imply that both the item database and the item allocation methods are important and examples are given on how these need to be tuned for each course. Different item allocation methods are discussed and a method is proposed for comparing several such schemes. It is shown that students improve their knowledge while using the system. Classical statistical models which do not include learning, but are designed for mere evaluation, are therefore not applicable. A corollary of the openness and emphasis on learning is that the student is permitted to continue requesting drill items until the system reports a grade which is satisfactory to the student. An obvious resulting challenge is how such a grade should be computed so as to reflect actual knowledge at the time of computation, entice the student to continue and simultaneously be a clear indication for the student. To name a few methods, a grade can in principle be computed based on all available answers on a topic, on the last few answers or on answers up to a given number of attempts, but all of these have obvious problems.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2013

Physics of non-steady state diffusion of lightweight atoms in a heavy atom matrix. Introducing an open-source tool for simulated-experiments in fluid mechanics

The practice-based learning methodologies offer to undergraduate professors different ways to illustrate certain general physic principles. Traditional experimental workbenches have been extensively used during decades for academic lessons in order to complete theoretical dissertations or lectures, aiming at assuring an adequate understanding. The high cost of materials and laboratory equipment, the excessive preparation time, and the difficulty for carrying out offsite-campus replications by students, are disadvantages that can discourage of trying new kinds of experimental tasks. This paper gives insight of simulated experiment possibilities through an open-source-based computational suite in teaching fluid mechanics. Physics underlying diffusion of a light specie in a heavier atom matrix, as function of time and position, were explained to students as an example to teach them the Fick's Second Law expression. We present a docent step-by-step programme, scheduled in three sessions. The expected solution is firstly explained and then compared both to a real case, by published results, and to the virtual-classroom experiment, by resolving a differential equation with numerical schemes. Students were able to make their own hypothesis, change input parameters, and contrasting their initial assumptions.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2014

A Thousand Problems in Cosmology: Horizons

This is one chapter of the collection of problems in cosmology, in which we assemble the problems, with solutions, that concern one of the most distinctive features of general relativity and cosmology---the horizons. The first part gives an elementary introduction into the concept in the cosmological context, then we move to more formal exposition of the subject and consider first simple, and then composite models, such as $Λ$CDM. The fourth section elevates the rigor one more step and explores the causal structure of different simple cosmological models in terms of conformal diagrams. The section on black holes relates the general scheme of constructing conformal diagrams for stationary black hole spacetimes. The consequent parts focus on more specific topics, such as the various problems regarding the Hubble sphere, inflation and holography. The full collection is available in the form of a wiki-based resource at universeinproblems.com. The cosmological community is welcome to contribute to its development.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2013

The occultation of Arcturus in the Vatican

The dome of Saint Peter's Basilica plays the role of the Moon during a stellar occultation and Arcturus is the target star. This occultation-like phenomenon is useful for introducing to occultation astronomy a class of student up to university level. It can be organized very easily at the convenience of the audience. Techical and didactical aspects are discussed; the video is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIfsj7t-u-c and has been realized with an ordinary camcorder.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2013

Meeting Student Needs for Multivariate Data Analysis: A Case Study in Teaching a Multivariate Data Analysis Course with No Pre-requisites

Modern students encounter big, messy data sets long before setting foot in our classrooms. Many of our students need to develop skills in exploratory data analysis and multivariate analysis techniques for their jobs after college, but these topics are not covered in introductory statistics courses. This case study describes my experience in designing and teaching a course on multivariate data analysis with no pre-requisites, using real data, active learning, and other activities to help students tackle the material.

stat.OT↗

arXiv2013

Tagging and Linking Lecture Audio Recordings: Goals and Practice

Making and distributing audio recordings of lectures is cheap and technically straightforward, and these recordings represent an underexploited teaching resource. We explore the reasons why such recordings are not more used; we believe the barriers inhibiting such use should be easily overcome. Students can listen to a lecture they missed, or re-listen to a lecture at revision time, but their interaction is limited by the affordances of the replaying technology. Listening to lecture audio is generally solitary, linear, and disjoint from other available media. In this paper, we describe a tool we are developing at the University of Glasgow, which enriches students' interactions with lecture audio. We describe our experiments with this tool in session 2012--13. Fewer students used the tool than we expected would naturally do so, and we discuss some possible explanations for this.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2013

Fractions in elementary education

This paper is one of a series in which elementary-education practice is analyzed by comparison with the history of mathematics, mathematical structure, modern practice, and (occasionally) cognitive neuroscience. The primary concerns are: Why do so many children find elementary mathematics difficult? And, why are the ones who succeed still so poorly prepared for college material needed for technical careers? The answer provided by conventional wisdom is essentially that mathematics is difficult. Third-graders are not developmentally ready for the subtlety of fractions, for instance, and even high-performing students cannot be expected to develop the skills of experienced users. However we will see that this is far from the whole story and is probably wrong: elementary-education fractions are genuinely harder and less effective than the version employed by experienced users. Experts discard at least 90% of what is taught in schools. Our educational system is actually counterproductive for skill development, and the reasons for this are an important secondary concern.

math.HO↗