School Physics Course Research Articles

ВІРТУАЛЬНІ ФІЗИЧНІ ДЕМОНСТРАЦІЇ У ЛАБОРАТОРНОМУ ПРАКТИКУМІ З МЕТОДИКИ НАВЧАННЯ ФІЗИКИ ЯК ЗАСІБ ФОРМУВАННЯ ФАХОВИХ КОМПЕТЕНТНОСТЕЙ МАЙБУТНІХ ВЧИТЕЛІВ ФІЗИКИ ТА ІНФОРМАТИКИ

The article presents both traditional and innovative approaches to understanding the goals, essence, content, and appropriate organization of a laboratory-based practicals on the methodology of teaching physics. It outlines the didactic features of its organization, which consist in the fact that the students’ and the teacher’s attention is focused on the activities of the students and the teacher and the subject – the content of the school physics course in general and the educational physics experiment (EPE). The article substantiates the importance of combining modern information and communication technologies with various types of educational physical experiments during laboratory-based classes on the methodology of teaching physics for the formation of professional competences for future physics teachers. The methodological features to organize laboratory-based classes on the methodology of teaching physics for future teachers of physics are described, and the content of methodological and instructional materials for laboratory works on the methodology of teaching physics for students of the master’s degree program is presented, which is based on the main provisions of the physics curriculum for students of general secondary schools education, and aimed at forming the professional competences of future physics teachers in simulated conditions (conditions close to professional activity). An indicative template “Physical Experiment Maps” for a laboratory workshop on physics teaching methods is proposed. Didactic support for students’ independent work during laboratory classes on physics teaching methods using information and communication technologies tools is presented: virtual demonstrations are selected and tasks for their implementation by students-future physics teachers are developed.

STEAM TECHNOLOGY AS A TOOL FOR DEVELOPING CREATIVITY OF STUDENTS: ON THE EXAMPLE OF A SCHOOL PHYSICS COURSE

Physics as a discipline has a great influence on the development of science and technology, engineering. A student who has worked in physics lessons with equipment and conducted experimental observations of phenomena with physical laws will be ready to perform any practical actions. The lack of demonstration rooms or equipment failure in schools create many obstacles. As a result, the graduate of the school becomes less interested in choosing technical and engineering specialties. One of the urgent problems in the school physics course is the preparation of students who are able to clearly search for physical laws and phenomena, conclusions, questions and reasons, assimilate information through the right choice of scientific literature and achieve new results, inclined to work with advanced technical equipment. The aim and the leading idea of our research is to develop the training of students in the field of physics based on STEAM education, to identify problems of weakening of natural-technical and engineering components in secondary school. In the course of the study, the world practice of STEAM was studied, a literature review based on articles in academic databases was conducted. The results of the study showed a lack of knowledge in the academic literature in this area. The article presents didactic conditions for the development of advanced technology for teaching a school physics course based on STEAM, the possibility of increasing the number of creative students who are able to work on various projects leading to new ideas. The results of the study allow us to create high-tech products based on STEAM at school bases.

Online Flipped Classroom: Developing Postgraduate Science Education Students’ Critical Thinking Skills

During the Covid-19 pandemic, online learning should be carried out through innovative methods. This study aims to determine whether implementing an online flipped classroom, with converting all face-to-face sessions into virtual face-to-face sessions, can facilitate the development of critical thinking skills of postgraduate science education students in the School Physics course. This quantitative study used one group pretest-postest research design. The subjects were postgraduate science education students who took School Physics courses in the first semester at one of the public universities in Indonesia. Online Flipped classroom was supported by Google Classroom Learning Management System (LMS). Critical thinking skills data in School Physics were obtained through tests. Data were analyzed using a description of normalized changes (c) and nonparametric-inferential analysis with the Related-Samples Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test. The results showed that the online flipped classroom could facilitate the development of the students’ critical thinking skills with an average normalized change of .71 in a high category. Even though the students felt the benefits of an online flipped classroom, they still wanted a face-to-face learning mode to be carried out soon.

The Need Analysis Of The Development Of Animation Video-Based Learning Media On Physics Education Students

The purpose of this article is to analyze the need for developing learning animation videos in School Physics courses. This research is in the form of exploratory descriptive research. The subjects of this study were students of the Physics Education study program, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Siliwangi University Batch 2021. The sample was randomly selected as many as 42 students. Data were collected by using observation questionnaire sheets in the School Physics lecture process. Observation results show that in school physics courses in the form of power point slides and e-learning modules. The results of the needs questionnaire analysis show that students of the Physics Education study program, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Siliwangi University Batch 2021 need learning media that can direct them to be able to learn both independently and in discussions by repeating lessons whenever and wherever to access them in the form of learning media in the form of animated learning videos

Acoustic characterization of magnetic braking with a smartphone

Smartphone sensors have shown to be adequate to perform physics experiments in high school and first-year university physics courses. The published work covers a wide range of topics within general physics such as linear and circular motions, oscillations, beats, acoustics, and optics, among others. The microphone and speakers have been particularly useful for studying sound phenomena, such as the determination of the speed of sound, the study of acoustic beats, or the Doppler effect.

Equitable approach to introductory calculus-based physics courses focused on problem solving

Introductory calculus-based mechanics (“Physics 1”) is an important gateway course for students desiring to pursue a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) career. A major challenge with this course is the large spread in the students’ incoming physics preparation. This level of preparation is strongly predictive of a students’ performance because of the overlap between Physics 1 and high school physics courses. Because the level of students’ incoming preparation is largely determined by the quality of their high school physics courses, Physics 1 can amplify K–12 educational inequities and be a barrier for marginalized students wishing to pursue a STEM career. Here, we present a novel introductory course design to address this equity challenge. The design and implementation are based on the concept of deliberate practice as applied to learning real-world problem solving. Students explicitly practice research-identified decision-based skills required for problem solving in the context of solving real-world problems. The problems used in the course and their solutions have little resemblance to what students encounter in high school physics, thereby reducing the dependence of course performance on the high school physics preparation. Versions of this course were taught at a highly selective private and a lightly selective public university. The students who took the course learned the physics content knowledge they needed for future courses, particularly in engineering, and their problem-solving skills improved substantially. Furthermore, their course performance had much less correlation with their incoming physics preparation than was the case for the outcomes from the traditional Physics 1 courses at both institutions: in one case the correlation dropped from r=0.62 to 0.14, and on the other case the correlation dropped from r=0.56 to 0.26. These findings suggest this course design can be a more equitable version of the traditional Physics 1 course, and hence particularly beneficial for marginalized students.Received 8 August 2022Accepted 23 September 2022DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.18.020124Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasDiversity & inclusionInstructional strategiesStudent preparationPhysics Education Research

A novel method to measure the thermal diffusivity of transparent materials

The refractive index of a liquid is known to depend strongly on the temperature gradient of liquids. When a laser beam passes through a transparent material going through thermal diffusion, the light projected onto a screen will be displaced in relation to the thermal diffusivity. A simple apparatus is used to measure the time evolution t of the laser beam displacement h and/vs. the position of the laser beam on the liquid container y whose liquid medium is going through thermal diffusion. Thermal diffusion dynamics can then be revealed. The thermal diffusivity of glycerol, ethanol, DI water, and NaCl aqueous solution has been measured. This simple procedure can demonstrate refractive index and thermal diffusivity in advanced high school physics courses.

Дидактическая сложность различных тем школьного курса физики и ее оценка

The article discusses the actual problem of assessing the didactic complexity of sufficiently large educational texts on the example of topics and sections of a school physics course. To determine the complexity of the text, the expert must: 1) divide the text into fragments of 3–4 pages; 2) for each fragment, write out 10 key terms in a file, knowledge of which is necessary for understanding the text; 2) collect key concepts in one file Slovar.txt and evaluate the complexity of each term; 3) using a special program Slozhnost.pas, accessing the file Slovar.txt, analyze files with keywords and calculate their average information capacity; 4) for each topic, estimate the proportion of mathematical and other formulas relative to the total volume; 5) write out the key terms present in mathematical formulas from each topic in a special file and evaluate their complexity; 7) using the Slozhnost.pas program, determine the total amount of information in the key terms included in the formulas, as well as the information folding coefficient; 8) find the average number of words in sentences, the average word length, and calculate the structural complexity of the text; 9) calculate differential and integral didactic complexity for each topic. The results of the analysis are presented in a table and histograms characterizing the didactic complexity of various sections and topics of the school physics course.

Investigation of High School Textbooks in terms of Particle Physics

In recent years, important international researches have been carried out in the field of particle physics. These studies are mostly carried out at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research. Important information and results are obtained in these experiments at CERN, where Turkey is also an associate member. These results are shared in the field and the environment is prepared for new research and experiments. In addition, the curriculum and textbooks in schools are updated in the light of the information obtained. Particle Physics covered in the subject of "Introduction to Atomic Physics and Radioactivity" given in the 12th grade in the High School Physics Curriculum in our country. In this research, the answer to the question "How is Particle Physics given in high school physics course curriculum and high school physics textbooks taught by the Ministry of National Education?" has been sought. For this purpose, firstly, the topics and learning outcomes related to particle physics were determined in the programs. Then, it was determined that the information given in high school physics books about particle physics is up-to-date with its scientific and educational features. At the end of the research, it was suggested to prepare high school physics textbooks based on current educational approaches, to focus on up-to-date information, to choose effective teaching methods and techniques such as research, inquiry, experiment, observation, simulation, and to benefit from information and communication technologies in order to teach particle physics effectively.

Enrollments in U.S. high school physics courses

Enrollments in U.S. high school physics courses

Understanding the Law of Conservation of Momentum in One-Dimensional Collisions Between Two Objects Using the Velocity Space Approach

The law of conservation of momentum is a fundamental law of nature. It states that the momentum of an isolated system is conserved. In high school or introductory-level physics courses, for simplicity, teachers and textbooks always use collisions in one dimension as the examples to introduce the concept of conservation of momentum. To solve simple problems involving one-dimensional collisions, all we need are basic algebraic manipulations. However, the relation between physical quantities, such as mass and the changes in velocity and kinetic energy, of the colliding objects is not obvious. For instance, if an object A collides with a stationary object B, what is the direction of A after the collision? Is it possible that the final velocity of A is zero in an inelastic collision? In this paper, we argue that the so-called velocity space approach can be highly effective for physics teachers in building a better understanding of the law of conservation of momentum.

РЕАЛІЗАЦІЯ ЕКОЛОГІЧНОЇ ОСВІТИ ПІД ЧАС ВИВЧЕННЯ ФІЗИКИ В ЗАКЛАДАХ ЗАГАЛЬНОЇ СЕРЕДНЬОЇ ОСВІТИ

The article considers the necessity and expediency of implementation of ecological education in general secondary education institutions during the study not only of physics, but also of other natural sciences.
 The results of the analysis of literature sources are described, on the basis of which it can be stated that the problem of ecological education and upbringing has been studied by many scientists. In particular, the general pedagogical aspects of theproblem of ecological education, conceptual bases of formation of ecological thinking, theoretical and methodological bases of ecological education, value aspects of ecological education, questions of ecological education in the process of studyingnatural cycle subjects and greening of school physics course are studied. At the same time, it is necessary to continue researching the possibilities of implementing environmental education during the various stages of physics classes in generalsecondary education and, importantly, in vocational (vocational) education.
 A number of didactic conditions for the formation of ecological knowledge arecsingled out, among which are: the need to take into account the age characteristics ofcthought processes, the relationship of memory, attention and success of students toform strong, deep and systematic knowledge of science; formation of systematiccknowledge of students; implementation of educational activities and communication in the natural environment, etc.
 The wide possibilities of the content of educational material from the school course of physics for realization of ecological education during training in establishments of general secondary education are confirmed. The content of theprogram material of the school course of physics gives an opportunity to acquaint students with a number of ideas that reveal the physical and technical side of the current environmental crisis and consider ways to overcome it.
 Examples of realization of some questions of ecological character which studying can be carried out at physics lessons in establishments of general secondary education are resulted.
 A number of forms of organization of educational and cognitive activities ofcstudents for the implementation of environmental education during the study ofcphysics are described.

Lab activities on temperature and thermodynamics

In this article I introduce three lab activities, appropriate for a high school physics course, that are related to temperature and thermodynamics. The first of these is a graphing lab where a dual Fahrenheit-Celsius thermometer is used to create a best-fit trend line that serves to introduce this graphing skill. The second is an experiment to find the melting point of coconut oil, which is a convenient and widely available substance, with a phase change in a safe temperature range. The third is a safer alternative or follow-up to the classic “Burn a Peanut” lab, where I have students investigate how many calories are in a “heat pack” hand warmer. The labs are designed to be affordable, easy to set up, and work well as inquiry investigations.

Investigation of the flux density of a solenoid using the magnetometer of smartphones

In physics lessons at secondary school and experimental physics courses at universities, the magnetic field inside a current-carrying solenoid is considered quantitatively. The corresponding equations and theories are supported by measuring the magnetic flux density inside the solenoid with a Hall probe. It has already been shown that smartphones with their internal magnetometer are suitable for quantitative investigations of magnetic fields. E.g., Silva proposed to wind a small coil on a pen and investigate the dependence of the stray field on the number of windings. Ogawara et al. placed a smartphone inside a current loop and studied the dependence of the flux density on current I.

Electromotive force (emf) for the confused

The electromotive force (emf) is a topic that is introduced in high school and undergraduate physics courses, but the numerous expressions for this quantity in different scenarios often lead to confusion among students. In addition, emf and potential difference are often treated as the same concept when being taught to students, and several misconceptions may arise from not distinguishing between the two. This paper aims to demonstrate the difference between the two quantities from their definitions and through the use of several examples, including the conceptual challenges when it comes to voltmeter measurements. This is expected to be of great interest to educators and students alike, as proper teaching of the topic will allow students to have a more thorough understanding of the effects of electromagnetic fields.

Attitudes towards physics. A study with high school students from the Colombian context

Science education should promote the development of competent students in science and develop their interest in science; however, although the role and relevance of science within society is evident; the interest towards it is not conscious, being the negative attitudes of the students the main problem in the teaching of physics, which translates into a deficient knowledge and lack of scientific vocation. This report aims to diagnose the attitudes of students in high school physics courses. The study was developed through a non-experimental, descriptive research design, obtained from the application of a Likert scale that evaluates attitudes towards physics, adapted and validated to the context of students in an educational institution in Colombia. The results indicate that the attitudes of the students are slightly favorable, which is an empirical precedent to continue with the studies on attitudes towards physic. This should be considered to enhance the learning processes in these students, especially for those who have their first approach to physical concepts and give importance to attitudes when teaching.

The readiness of teachers and students to use and perform tasks on natural science literacy

The article is devoted to the actual problem of the formation and assessment of the formation of natural science literacy in the framework of the content of the school physics course. Natural science literacy is a component of functional literacy – the central concept of the modern approach to determining educational achievements in the world practice of researching educational systems in different countries. The purpose of the article is to determine the state of readiness of the teacher and student for the development of natural science literacy. To this end, the problem of the formation of natural science literacy in Russia was considered from different angles: the readiness of teachers of the natural science subject area to use practice-oriented assignments in the classroom; the readiness of students to complete such tasks; analysis of the practice of constructing tasks in publications. The readiness of teachers was determined by a questionnaire, the readiness of students was determined by conducting cross-sectional work and analyzing its results. Conclusions were drawn on the basis of the conducted research. The main results of the study are: the statement of the fact of insufficient awareness of teachers about the essence of the concepts of “functional literacy” in general and “natural science literacy” in particular. As a result, it is stated that the students are not ready for a scientific explanation and modeling of a real situation.

Распределение различных видов учебной информации в школьном курсе физики

The modern physics course appeared as a result of a long-term evolution of the physics teaching methods. The model of the school course is textbooks; they reflect the fundamental laws of cognition of the surrounding world and methodological ideas, therefore the problem of studying the distribution of various types of training material in the physics course is relevant. The article uses previously obtained estimates of the differential complexity of various topics of the school physics course. This takes into account: 1) the differential complexity of the text, depending on the information amount in the volume unit, on which the difficulty of understanding it by the student depends; 2) the integral complexity (general informativeness), which characterizes the total amount of information in the text; the amount of time and effort required to study training material depends on it; 3) the share of educational information related to mechanics, molecular physics and thermodynamics, electrodynamics, optics and quantum physics. It also took into account the fact that physical and mathematical complexity are independent characteristics of the physics textbooks. The carried out content analysis of standard school textbooks made it possible to determine the integral complexity of each topic and build a graph with an accumulation that shows the dynamics of changes in the contribution of each physics section to the total information amount over time. In particular, it follows from the graph that: 1) the speed of transmission of educational information in the 10-11th grades is 5 times higher than in the 7-9th grades; 2) the amount of information on physics reported to a student by the end of the 11th grade is 4,4 times more than the amount of information reported in the 7th, 8th and 9th grades.

Effect of Feedback on Learning Motivation of Primary Teacher Education Students in Primary School Physics Courses

Based on the results of the questionnaire distributed to Primary Teacher Education Students, 96% of students said that Physics is difficult to understand because the material is very complex, many formulas, especially the learning process is done online. This study aims to describe the influence of providing feedback on the motivation of Primary Teacher Education Students in primary school physics courses. The method used in this research is descriptive qualitative. Meanwhile, the instrument used was a questionnaire which was distributed to 115 elementary school education students. The result of the research shows that giving feedback consistently is able to motivate students. This can be seen from the results of the questionnaires distributed, each indicator is of very good value.

METHODS OF FORMING ELEMENTARY CONCEPTS OF MODERN ENERGY SOURCES IN STUDENTS IN THE SCHOOL PHYSICS COURSE

The article provides and analyzes information on modern types of energy sources, technical possibilities of their use, future prospects in the school physics course.