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The article discusses the Mitchell Institute Physics Enhancement Program (MIPEP), which aims to support high school physics teachers who have little to no background in the subject. The program, run by the physics faculty at Texas A&M University, focuses on increasing teachers' physics content knowledge, improving their confidence in teaching physics, and introducing research-based instructional strategies. MIPEP includes intensive two-week sessions with content-focused instruction, inquiry-based labs, and enrichment activities. The program has shown positive impacts on participants' knowledge and confidence, and it is suggested that similar programs could be implemented by other physics departments to improve physics instruction at the high school level. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses how the animated movie Lightyear introduces the concept of time dilation in a science fiction context, which can be used to spark discussions in physics classrooms. It highlights the potential benefits of using popular culture, like movies, to engage students in learning about physics. The analysis of time dilation in Lightyear is presented, along with suggestions for in-class discussions to help students understand the difference between scientific concepts and science fiction. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of discussing scientific accuracy in movies and exploring other related topics like time travel and parallel timelines. [Extracted from the article]

This article presents a study that examines the mechanical properties of spider webs using a simple model. The researchers investigated how the shape and tension distribution of the web changed under different conditions. They found that a spider web with a higher tension distribution ratio handles loads better but is more vulnerable to damage. The study also found that the loss of radial segments can reduce hunting efficiency. The researchers suggest that a spider web with a high tension distribution ratio and reliable radial segments would be a good choice. The study emphasizes the interdisciplinary nature of studying spider webs and suggests potential areas for future research. [Extracted from the article]

The article examines the use of ChatGPT, an AI engine, in physics education. It discusses the potential and limitations of ChatGPT in providing information to students and addresses concerns about its reliability. Previous studies have shown that ChatGPT can be used to enhance critical thinking skills and problem-solving in physics classrooms. The article focuses on the different types of physics education questions and presents the results obtained from using ChatGPT to answer them. The study found that while ChatGPT performed well in answering questions related to net force and acceleration, it struggled with questions involving displacement, trigonometric relationships, and friction. The article emphasizes the importance of educators understanding the limitations of AI tools and designing assignments that promote genuine understanding and critical thinking in physics education. Further research is needed as AI technology continues to advance. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses a home experiment kit designed for physics students to perform experiments at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The focus of the experiment is to explain the phenomenon of a glue stick appearing white near a light source and turning orange towards the opposite side. The experiment involves constructing a homemade spectroscope, measuring the transmittance of different colored filters, and measuring the mean free paths for the glue at each filter wavelength. The results show that the transmittance of the glue stick strongly depends on the wavelength of the incident light, demonstrating selective transmission. The activity can be used to reinforce concepts related to the physical basis of the greenhouse effect and can be a substitute for campus lab activities in distance learning. [Extracted from the article]

This document discusses the use of project-based learning (PBL) in an introductory undergraduate physics course. The project involves building a prototype of a county fair game called "High Striker" that incorporates concepts of electromagnetism and classical mechanics. Students work in teams to design and build the prototype, using components such as force sensors, homemade coils, and Arduino boards. The document highlights the benefits of PBL in promoting active learning and the development of critical thinking and collaboration skills. The authors of the document are experts in physics education and have conducted research in various areas of physics. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses the integration of large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, into physics education. LLMs are artificial intelligence methods that can generate human-like text and have the potential to enhance personalized learning and provide immediate formative feedback to students. However, there are concerns about the accuracy and reliability of the feedback provided by LLMs. The article presents an application called LEAP (Learning with AI about Physics) that allows students to interact with ChatGPT for physics problem solving, with predetermined prompts to ensure focused and relevant feedback. The article emphasizes the need for careful integration of LLMs into teaching practices and highlights the potential benefits and challenges of using LLMs in physics education. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses the design and implementation of an inquiry-based activity aimed at addressing a temperature-energy misconception among students. The activity focuses on the heating curve of water and the phases of melting, heating, and boiling, highlighting the energy delivered to the water. By making incorrect predictions based on the misconception, students are able to observe contradictory evidence and correct their misconceptions. The article describes the technical and pedagogical issues encountered in designing and implementing the activity, and includes a lesson template in the appendix. The activity aims to promote cognitive conflict and update students' mental models through the use of predictions, observations, and technology. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of addressing misconceptions in interdisciplinary programs such as sustainable energy. [Extracted from the article]

At the top of the trajectory, many physics students mistakenly assume that if the velocity is zero, the acceleration must be zero too. Tying these different arrows to the concepts of velocity and acceleration can reinforce that velocity and acceleration are different quantities - make these detached from the actual object, as this will be helpful to students in distinguishing them from force vectors introduced later. Here is where the realization that "gravity never turns off" and drawn-in velocity and acceleration vectors can again be helpful. Introductory physics students frequently confuse concepts of velocity and acceleration, as in the example of a projectile motion problem where an object (e.g., a ball) is tossed upward in a gravitational field and undergoes freefall. [Extracted from the article]

Generally, the goal of a student activity involving analysis of video data is to obtain the ( I x i , I y i ) position of a particular object in as many frames of the video as possible. Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in analyzing the motion of objects in video data as a way for students to connect the concepts of physics to something tangible like a video recording of an experiment.[[1]] Inexpensive devices can now record videos at 120 or 240 frames/s, and, among instructors, there is an appetite for substantially rethinking the objectives of introductory labs (e.g., Refs. In this paper, we both include some general advice to help object-tracking algorithms locate an object and provide our own algorithms that are simpler and potentially more effective than the sophisticated image-processing algorithms that are currently being used. [Extracted from the article]

The experiment is designed so that after the rubber band chain returns to its equilibrium length, the phone should continue to slide due to the phone's momentum for >50 ms (ideally a few hundred milliseconds) before coming to a stop. The coefficient of friction is then determined by measuring the acceleration of the phone as it slides along a horizontal surface during the time when the only force acting on the phone is the result of kinetic friction. Decades of improvements in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) have enabled high-performance compact sensors to become routinely integrated into smartphones. 4 Experiments designed to use smartphone sensors from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory: Physics with Phones | Science and Technology (https://st.llnl.gov/sci-ed/Physics-with-Phones). [Extracted from the article]

The article "Reflections on a very powerful factor in teaching and learning" discusses the importance of parental care in teaching and learning. The author, drawing from personal experiences, argues that a loving care and compassion for students' total welfare is the most powerful factor in education. While instructional techniques are crucial, the emotional aspect of teaching, referred to as the heart wing, is equally important in nurturing students. The article emphasizes the need for teachers to show parental care for students, highlighting the positive impact it can have on both educators and learners. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses the importance of understanding the cosmological expansion and the work of Edwin Hubble in studying the birth and evolution of the universe. Hubble used the redshifted spectra of galaxies and the distances determined by Henrietta Leavitt's work on Cepheid variables to create a graph showing that galaxies farther away from us are receding faster. However, many students find it difficult to grasp the concept of an expanding universe. To help students understand this concept, an activity is presented using elastic to represent the universe and dots to represent galaxies. By stretching the elastic uniformly, students can observe the increasing distances between galaxies and create a graph analogous to the Hubble constant. The activity also demonstrates that the expansion of space is the cause of the observed results. Overall, this activity helps students appreciate the shape of a velocity vs. distance plot and understand the foundation of modern cosmology. [Extracted from the article]

The 2024 AAPT Summer Meeting in Boston presented several awards to individuals who have made significant contributions to the field of physics education. Don Lincoln, a staff scientist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, received the 2024 Klopsteg Memorial Lecture Award for his work as a science writer, producer of educational videos, and public speaker. Stephanie Chasteen, an independent consultant, was awarded the 2024 Lillian McDermott Medal for her contributions to program development and evaluation in physics education. Additionally, five individuals were named as AAPT Fellows for their efforts in improving diversity, equity, and inclusion in physics education. [Extracted from the article]

The article titled "Thank You to Our Referees: June 1, 2023–May 31, 2024" expresses gratitude towards the referees who have contributed to The Physics Teacher journal. The author emphasizes the importance of these referees and acknowledges their high-quality contributions. The article also mentions a physics puzzle and shares some experiences from the AAPT meeting in Boston, highlighting engaging discussions and various activities related to physics education. The list of referees is included at the end of the article, but it does not provide any information or context about these individuals. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses an experiment conducted to determine the coefficient of linear thermal expansion, αT, of a high-carbon steel wire using a guitar. The frequency of a plucked guitar string was measured at different temperatures, and the change in frequency was used to calculate αT. The experiment was conducted using standard lab equipment and a mobile phone app to measure frequency. The results were found to be within 5% of the accepted value for αT. The article also discusses some challenges faced during the experiment and emphasizes the importance of measuring the frequency on the first pluck of the string. Overall, this experiment provides an accessible and hands-on approach to understanding thermal physics properties. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses the phenomenon of relative motion when accelerating a container of an object submerged in a fluid. The authors conducted experiments using Styrofoam and rubber balls suspended in water and observed their movement in relation to the acceleration of the container. They found that the Styrofoam ball moved in the direction of acceleration due to horizontal buoyancy, while the rubber ball moved in the opposite direction. The article highlights the importance of considering horizontal buoyancy and encourages further exploration of the concepts of inertia and buoyancy. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses the inclined plane and its various applications in physics. The author explores the historical significance of the inclined plane, including its use in demonstrations by Francis Hauksbee and William Whiston in the 18th century. The article also mentions Edwin Hall's cart, which was used to study equilibrium conditions on an inclined plane. Additionally, the author discusses Archimedes' screw, the angle of repose, the inclined pendulum, Galileo's use of the inclined plane in physics experiments, and the cone rolling uphill demonstration. Overall, the article provides a comprehensive overview of the inclined plane and its importance in physics education. [Extracted from the article]

Popular media is an unspoken yet ever-present element of the physics landscape and a tool we can use in our teaching. It is also well understood that students enter the physics classroom with a host of conceptions learned from the world at large. It stands to reason, then, to suspect that media coverage may be a major contributing factor to students' views on physical phenomena and the nature of science—one whose influence will only grow amid the 21st-century digital age. Yet the role of the media in shaping physics teaching and learning has remained largely unexplored in the physics education research (PER) literature so far. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Refrigerator magnets belong to a group of simple devices that we use all the time but rarely question how they work. While refrigerator magnets have received considerable attention in physics education literature, the focus of these papers was mainly on the explanations of their structure or demonstrations of the structure of the magnetic layer. The goal of the present paper is to describe a set of activities that can be performed with general physics students to help them understand how refrigerator magnets are constructed and to simultaneously engage them in such science practices as creating and evaluating models, developing predictions based on hypotheses, performing experiments to evaluate the proposed hypothesis, and switching between different representations. This sequence of activities follows the logical progression of the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) approach. We piloted all materials with high school physics students, undergraduate physics majors, and graduate level physics education students, and revised based on student feedback. All courses where we implemented the activities were ISLE-based courses; therefore, the students were accustomed to working in groups devising explanations, devising experiments to test them, and sharing their ideas with the rest of the class. All activities that we propose require only the equipment that students commonly have at home (the most sophisticated is a smartphone with a magnetic field sensor). Therefore, the activities can also be used while teaching online. These activities took between 45 and 90 min for the students to complete. The students found them valuable and interesting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hence, I v i SB I x i , I y i sb oscillates with period HT ht (4) This phenomenon is known as the polygonal effect.[3] The animation of this effect is available at Ref. [4]. We describe the features and reasons for occurrence of the peculiar oscillations in the speed and acceleration of a taut chain passing over a rotating sprocket. [Extracted from the article]

The COVID-19 pandemic imposed profound changes on the way we think about undergraduate physics education. Online courses became mainstream. Exam formats were reimagined. Digital whiteboards replaced face-to-face discussions. Laboratory classes were outfitted with home-delivered supply kits. And all of us developed a more intimate knowledge of Greek letters and symbols (delta, omicron, etc.) than we might have comfortably liked to admit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses a demonstration that compares the moment of inertia of hollow and solid rolling cylinders. The author describes a new object, a spool, that can be used in addition to the traditional cylinders to further illustrate the concept of mass distribution and moment of inertia. The article provides detailed measurements and calculations for the hollow cylinder, solid cylinder, and spool, and presents the results of video analysis comparing the predicted and observed times for the objects to roll down a ramp. The author concludes that the new spool-shaped object offers an additional example for students to understand the implications of mass distribution on moment of inertia. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses the use of videos and video analysis software in physics education. It argues that using real-life examples, such as the takeoff of an airliner, can make physics learning more engaging and meaningful for students. The article presents a study that analyzes the takeoff of an Embraer ERJ-195 airliner using video footage and software. The results show that the movement of the plane can be accurately described as uniformly accelerated motion. The article concludes that this approach can be easily implemented in physics courses and provides a realistic example of a key physics concept. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses the use of LiDAR-enabled smartphones to study the dynamics and constants of a damped spring pendulum. Traditional experiments using smartphone accelerometers have limitations in analyzing the damping of the movement. LiDAR technology, which measures distances with high precision, provides a more intuitive alternative for studying the spring pendulum. The article describes the theoretical background, experimental setup, data collection, and data analysis process. The results show that the integration of smartphone-based LiDAR technology is valuable in measuring the oscillation of the damped spring pendulum and analyzing its intrinsic parameters. The article concludes by highlighting the potential of smartphone technology and LiDAR for investigating classical physics phenomena. [Extracted from the article]

Laura H. Greene has been awarded the prestigious Hans Christian Oersted Medal for her significant contributions to the teaching of physics and her work in the field of novel quantum materials. She is the Chief Scientist at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and the Marie Krafft Professor of Physics at Florida State University. Katherine Mack has received the Richtmyer Memorial Lecture Award for her outstanding contributions to physics and her effective communication of those contributions to educators. She is a theoretical astrophysicist and currently holds the Hawking Chair in Cosmology and Science Communication at the Perimeter Institute. Tatiana Erukhimova, Jennifer Blue, Juan Burciaga, and Tony Musumba have all received the Homer L. Dodge Citation for Distinguished Service to AAPT for their contributions to physics education and their efforts to enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion in the field. [Extracted from the article]

Video analysis tools such as Tracker are used to study mechanical motion captured by photography. One can also imagine a similar tool for tracking thermal motion captured by thermography. Since its introduction to physics education, thermal imaging has been used to visualize phenomena that are invisible to the naked eye and teach a variety of physics concepts across different educational settings. But thermal cameras are still scarce in schools. Hence, videos recorded using thermal cameras such as those featured in "YouTube Physics" are suggested as alternatives. The downside is that students do not have interaction opportunities beyond playing those videos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies reveal people from marginalized groups (e.g., people of color and women) continue to earn physics degrees at alarmingly low rates. This phenomenon is not surprising given reports of the continued perception of physics as a masculine space and the discrimination faced by people of color and women within the field. To realize the vision of an equitable physics education, fully open to and supportive of marginalized groups, teachers need ways of seeing equity as something that is concrete and actionable on an everyday basis. In our work, teachers have found value in intentionally reflecting on their instruction and their students explicitly in terms of race, gender, and other social markers. We find they are then better positioned to build equitable physics classrooms. Without a focus on specific social markers, common obstacles such as color-evasiveness emerge, which obstruct the pursuit of equity in classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During my time in graduate school, I was fortunate to spend time working with the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University. The Center's most notable feature is its use of techniques from improvisational theater ("improv") to develop scientists' public communication skills—an approach that has been borne out in several contexts, including mathematics and clinical medicine. The improvisational concepts I learned there and elsewhere have profoundly influenced my approach to interacting with my students. After all, when a student asks a novel question, I do not know where they are coming from nor what preconceived ideas they may bring to the interaction. In this unplanned space, our conversation could easily become a meandering mess, but my goal instead is that it should have certain essential elements that make it complete and conceptually satisfying, like a successful improv scene. In this article, I summarize three basic improv concepts and provide examples of their use in the physics classroom: active listening, the "yes, and ..." principle, and the "button." These principles embody widely studied theories of physics education yet provide succinct, actionable reminders of how to put these theories into practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional high-stakes summative assessments—timed, in-class exams accounting for a large percentage of the term's overall grade—have often received criticism from the educational community. Such assessments tend to prize a particular "narrow bundle of skills," and have been shown in some contexts to produce disparate outcomes between different demographic groups. Alternative low-stakes assessments (assignments with significantly less impact on the overall grade) have shown potential to improve student engagement and close demographic gaps. At the same time, principles from physics education research suggest to us that students may benefit from the challenge of writing their own physics problems. Conjoining these ideas, we document an assignment ("The Problem Project") in which students were asked to create and solve a problem of their own design, as an alternative form of assessment, and provide exploratory research into its equity impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coulomb's law is a typical representative of the inverse-square laws that appear in various learning contexts in physics. In the usual classroom setting, most students do not have the opportunity to experimentally discover the interdependence of variables described by this law. Recently, digital technologies have become more prevalent at all levels of education. Teachers and researchers are successfully using computer-based simulations to improve physics education. Augmented reality is one of the emerging digital technologies that have the potential to improve students' understanding of a wide range of educational topics. Nevertheless, it is advisable that students and teachers are familiar with the most efficient use of selected digital tools before using augmented reality-enriched physics lectures. In this paper, we present our augmented reality simulation called CoulombsLawAR, which could be useful for teaching Coulomb's law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an ongoing challenge with STEM education: making physics, math, and science, in general, interesting, understandable, and retentive for college science and non-science majors, K-12 students, and the public. If not imparting detailed knowledge, at least one would like to introduce important concepts that will be remembered, appreciated, and hopefully would be pursued in more detail by audience members. One solution: as noted by Socrates, "Wisdom begins in wonder." Indeed, magic as a form of wonderment dates back to Socrates and even earlier. One of the first magic books, The Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot, was published in 1584, predating publication of many science texts. In this paper the author, based on recent research, advocates using special forms of magic to both amaze and teach, and in particular to illustrate the wonders of modern physics, i.e., Nature's magic, but with connections also to classical physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Newton's laws are essential for understanding causes and description of mechanical motion. Great attention is paid to them during physics education. Unfortunately, many students, not only in high school, but also undergraduates, can recite them but do not understand their essence. Therefore, it is useful to demonstrate different experiments in the classroom in order to support and strengthen their understanding. Less traditional experiments demonstrating Newton's laws can be performed using Poggendorff's scales (also known as Poggendorff's fall device). This article presents four experiments with such a device that are not common and lead to a deeper understanding of Newton's laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physics is not a very popular subject at German schools, and several studies indicate that girls are less interested than boys in the traditional physics curriculum. To address this problem, physics education should be up to date, context oriented, interesting for girls and boys, and emerge from their everyday life. The ROSE study shows that astronomy, human biology, and space are interesting for boys and girls and therefore a suitable context for physics lessons. In the field of astronomy and space exploration, the research is both highly current and part of the students' life, as they hear about discoveries and missions in the news. One possible future space mission is the human exploration of Mars. Such a trip is not easy; various factors have to be considered and risks must be minimized. One risk is the vacuum in space while there is higher air pressure in the spaceship itself. This aspect must be taken into account when designing a spaceship, for example, the "Crew Dragon" by Space X. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on various summer professional development opportunities for physics teachers. The 2024 AAPT Summer Meeting will take place in Boston, MA, followed by the PERC and PhysTEC conferences. The American Modeling Teachers Association will offer summer workshops on Modeling Physics teaching across the country. Additionally, the Perimeter Institute will provide online summer programming. The article encourages physics teachers to take advantage of these opportunities for professional growth. [Extracted from the article]

Electromagnetism (E&M) is often challenging for students enrolled in introductory college-level physics courses. Compared to mechanics, the mathematics of E&M is more sophisticated and the representations are more abstract. Furthermore, students may lack productive intuitions they had with force and motion. In this article, we explore the mathematization of electric charge. Specifically, we explore how difficulties with positive and negative signs can arise for learners who approach integers primarily as positions on a number line. We discuss the nuances of electric charge as a physical quantity and situate it in a body of work by mathematics and physics education researchers to characterize the uses and meanings of signs. We then describe preliminary research that illustrates the effect of wording differences on student reasoning about electric charge as a signed quantity. Finally, we discuss implications for instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All students deserve access to effective, equitable physics education. Postsecondary faculty have been shown to be unprepared to support students with disabilities in their classes, and popular, research-based introductory physics curricula do not adequately plan for variations in learners' needs, abilities, and interests. It is urgent to address this disparity because students with disabilities are enrolling in postsecondary education at increasing rates and enroll in STEM degree programs at steady rates. Specifically, in 2014, the National Center on Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) found that 10.5% of students enrolled in science and engineering degree programs identified with a disability. The purpose of this paper is to provide resources that instructors can use in their classes to promote accessibility and support all learners. In this paper we: 1) provide a brief review of the literature related to supporting students with disabilities in the context of STEM; 2) describe Universal Design for Learning, which is a design framework intended to encourage development of curricula that support all learners; and 3) provide a list of resources that physics instructors can use to increase support for students with disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of a public education outreach effort, an introduction to the health effects of ionizing radiation and the field of medical physics was developed by a clinical medical physicist. The presentation was delivered to a broad public audience in 2019 (prior to COVID-19 safety concerns) through a community outreach science literacy program that pairs popular films with educational material. The program is a collaboration between a local science center and a community movie theater, and includes content developed by a keynote guest scientist and the screening of a popular film. The film chosen for the medical physics curriculum was "Mad Max: Fury Road" (Warner Bros. Pictures, Burbank, CA), which takes place in a fictional post-apocalyptic environment with widespread radiation contamination. The lecture introduced the audience to concepts of ionizing radiation, DNA damage from radiation, risk models, historical significance, ionizing radiation in the film, and ionizing radiation in our world (including therapeutic medical applications). A panel of clinical medical physicists answered audience questions following the film screening. Event attendance was high, with ticketed and lecturer seats occupying 98% of the theater's seating capacity. Informal feedback from audience members indicated attendees had an increased interest of the field of medical physics following the program. The described education and outreach format may be used by educators interested in similar opportunities in their own communities, and also may be adapted as an entertaining and accessible installment of a physics club, seminar, or colloquium event in more formal educational settings. The electronic lecture slides are available for download as supplementary materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The wide range and number of articles published in this column show that smartphones are very useful tools, capable of accomplishing many tasks with just a single click.[1] They are loaded with many sensors that can be used as a tool for learning physics and performing physics classroom experiments. It has already often been described how mechanical oscillations can be analyzed in different contexts and ways with smartphones.[[2], [4]] In this article, the damping effect of a simple pendulum is studied with a smartphone hanging in different orientations. [Extracted from the article]

Over the course of the semester, I learned that generating buy-in and taking a scaffolded approach to math-based problem solving are important in nurturing student engagement. In this course, I observed that hands-on projects, interaction with speakers belonging to underrepresented groups, community-building exercises, and guided problem solving were all practices that were well received by my students. Modified course outline In response to the students' concerns, I redesigned the course over the rest of the semester. [Extracted from the article]

In May 2021, I The Physics Teacher i launched a new column aimed at questions surrounding justice in physics and physics education. Pervasive unexamined anti-Blackness Anti-Blackness is pervasive in academic spaces, and physics curricula, programs, and departments are no exceptions (see e.g., Ref. [10]). [Extracted from the article]

In the last decades spectroscopy began to play an essential role in physics education research with the recognition that atomic spectra constitute a good occasion to study the concepts of quantum mechanics. Moreover, activities in which atomic spectra are studied in order to understand star structure and evolution have proved particularly engaging for students. In this sense, the hydrogen atom spectrum is especially important in astronomy. Other researchers showed how interdisciplinary experimental activities involving interferometry and applied optics offer a good occasion to teach fundamental concepts of radiation-matter interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Possibly the greatest irony of physics education is the difficulty of demonstrating optics in a visible way. The two most common solutions to this conundrum are to either use "all-inclusive" optical apparatuses, like a large- format camera, or to rely on classic ray-tracing diagrams. While the former looks elegant while demonstrating the inverted nature of its images at the front of a classroom, its inner workings and method of inverting remain mysterious. The mechanics of the latter are more evident but are limited to two dimensions and the willingness of students to accept the drawing as fact. More advanced solutions include computer modeling of 3D optics or benchtop ray-tracing demonstrations, but between these the demonstrator effectively trades a third dimension for verisimilitude. A more encompassing solution would be a means to trace rays in three dimensions through a variety of optical devices. Previously, the rub has been identifying a viable point source of rays for classroom demonstrations. In this paper, we present such a source and several sequences of demonstrations utilizing it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to provide physics teachers and physics students with interdisciplinary cultural and scientific related content. The dombra is on the one hand a cultural symbol of Kazakhstan with a long tradition. On the other hand, the dombra as a musical instrument is an object of interest in acoustics. The topic can lead to deeper insights into theory of musical instruments and acoustics and to positive motivational effects as well. The idea of this article originated in a guest lecture in physics at Taraz State Pedagogical University (Kazakhstan), where one of the authors introduced physics teacher students to "New Technologies in Physics Education." This course was about good practice examples of integration of mobile devices and their built-in sensors in physics classes. An overview of this innovative educational field is given in Ref. 1. There is a wide range of smartphone-enhanced experiments, from simple hands-on experiments to complex digital data collection and modeling tasks in particular in the field of acoustics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within physics education research (PER), inductive teaching strategies (e.g., inquiry-based teaching) have long been a goal. Yet others do not seem to be convinced that consensus exists with respect to the goals of physics education and identify three possible goals as: (1) to teach practical, factual knowledge, (2) to develop deep understandings of fundamental principles, and (3) to promote appreciation and use of scientific methods. Of course these three goals are not mutually exclusive, and many in the science education research community argue that developing an understanding of the nature of science (NOS) to be a worthy goal as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we introduce the Intersectionally Conscious Collaboration (ICC) protocol to physics educators who seek to disrupt the long-standing inequities in their field. Recent studies raise awareness of diversity and inclusivity concerns and propose best practices for reducing bias toward women, LGBTQ+ students, and racially/ethnically minoritized students. Documented evidence demonstrates persistent challenges for women in physics in university settings, even addressing the identities and experiences of Women of Color. Simone Hyater-Adams and colleagues' Critical Physics Identity framework, focused on Black physics identity, simultaneously considers racial and physics identities and individuals' experiences within the context of structural and institutionalized oppression in the physics community. The ICC protocol includes six elements designed to support collaboration and inclusive instructional practices that respond to how multidimensional inequities and power differentials may manifest in academic settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the fact that the free-body diagram is the most common method of representing forces in physics education, alternative means have been proposed over the years. Here we present a summary of the proposals found in the literature on physics education. We aim to discuss the pros and cons of these proposals, examine their degree of iconicity, and analyze their suitability for helping students understand the sum of forces (Newton's second law), the action-reaction principle (Newton's third law), and the nature of interaction (fundamental forces). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]