Innovations in teaching of the Physics and Astronomy laboratories

Abstract

The laboratory section of the introductory Physics course provides students with the initial laboratory skills and practical experience that would be further honed by higher level courses. The quality of that experience as well as the practical applicability and variety of the lab skills are important. Since the start of the current pandemic and restrictions on lab sessions (later replaced with room limitation of number of students attending), a new approach had to be found to provide a complete lab experience to students. This paper describes the new experiments and the innovative methodology that were introduced with the use of the Tracker software in the introductory Physics I laboratory. This new methodology has not only expanded the number of possible experiments for the laboratory, but also has provided students with the ability to conduct some of the simple experiments at home using common household items, thus offering the exciting experience to students and the backup option to instructors in the case of further restrictions to attendance of lab facilities by students.