Table of contents

Girls in Physics: Getting girls engaged with physics Schools Lecture: How to explore the universe: the IOP schools lecture series 2009 Elastomobile Competition: Rubber-band vehicles go for gold Congress: Congress celebrates centenary Outreach Programme: Tales of the Stars inspires young children from around the world Physics Olympiad: BPhO selects top students for International Physics Olympiad Mobile Science: Mobile teaching lab visits rural Turkey China: Inspiration and competition in China

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By means of a simple device, made by students themselves, the movements of the Sun and the Moon can be studied at different latitudes. Using this device, it is easy to explain phenomena such as the midnight Sun, zenith pass and why the Moon 'smiles'. In this article, we show various photos of the Sun's movements, alongside their simulations on the solar demonstrator.

The main purpose of the stellar demonstrator is to help explain the movement of stars. In particular, students have difficulties understanding why, if they are living in the Northern Hemisphere, they may observe starts in the Southern Hemisphere, or why circumpolar stars are not the same in different parts of Europe. Using the demonstrator, these questions and others have a simple answer.

The different combinations involved in additive and subtractive colour mixing can often be difficult for students to remember. Using transmission graphs for filters of the primary colours and a numerical scheme to write out the relationships are good exercises in analytical thinking that can help students recall the combinations rather than just attempting to memorize them.

Students often find the difference in the electromagnetic and the acoustic Doppler formulae somewhat puzzling. As is shown below, geometrical diagrams and the concept of 'event'—a point in spacetime having coordinates (x,y,z,t)—can be a useful and simple way to explain the physical background behind the fundamental differences between the two kinds of Doppler phenomena.

The bicycle provides a context-rich problem accessible to students in a first-year physics course, encircling several core physics principles such as conservation of total energy and angular momentum, dissipative forces, and vectors. In this article, I develop a simple numerical model that can be used by any first-year physics student to investigate the maximum speed of a road bicycle under various real-world conditions. The model calculates speed as a function of time for a given set of input parameters, such as the rider's input power (delivered through the drive train to the rear wheel) and frontal surface area.

A simple horizontal axis wind turbine can be easily constructed using a 1.5 l PET plastic bottle, a compact disc and a small dynamo. The turbine operates effectively at low wind speeds and has a rotational speed of 500 rpm at a wind speed of about 14 km h⁻¹. The wind turbine can be used to demonstrate the relationship between open circuit voltage and wind speed, and to show how varying the size, shape and number of turbine blades can affect power output from the device.

The objective of this article is to contribute to the scant literature that exists on historical developments on the nature of light. It traces the nature of light from the times of the ancient Greeks to the classical theories prior to Planck. The development of thought that characterizes the evolution of a concept in physics over time affords opportunities to see how it is shaped to the level of present-day understanding. A case is made for incorporating the historical development of ideas in the teaching of physics.

Following on from our previous article (Oon and Subramaniam 2009 Phys. Educ.44 384–91), here we trace ideas on the history of light from the Planck era to modern times. In particular, the seminal contributions of Planck, Einstein and de Broglie are highlighted. Some lesser known facets of the nature of light are also emphasized. It is stressed that budding physicists in schools have a lot to learn from the history of these developments.

An educational and historical study of the projectile motion with drag forces dependent on speed shows, by simple results, that trajectories quite similar to those depicted before the Galilean era may be obtained with a realistic choice of quantities involved. Numerical simulations of the trajectory in space and velocity coordinates help us to understand the dynamics of motion.

Because mathematical formulae and problem solving are such prominent components of most introductory physics courses, many students consider these courses to be nothing more than courses in applied mathematics. As a result, students often do not develop an acceptable understanding of the relationship between mathematics and science and of the role that mathematical modelling plays in science knowledge generation. This paper describes an instructional sequence on wave motion based on teaching through modelling that serves not only to build student understanding of wave characteristics, but also to demonstrate through multiple representations a primary relationship between science and mathematics. This lesson further demonstrates how model building can combine technology and pedagogy to strengthen student understanding of the scientific process.

We discuss some simple experiments dealing with intriguing properties of light and its interaction with matter. In particular, we show how to emphasize that light reflection, refraction and scattering can provide a proper, physical description of human perception of the 'colour' white. These experiments can be used in the classroom with an enquiry approach, and it is in this spirit that we will present them.

The power distributions of nearly all major countries have accepted three-phase distribution as a standard. With increasing power requirements of instrumentation today even a small physics laboratory requires a three-phase supply. While physics students are given an introduction to this in passing, no experimental work is done with three-phase supply due to the possibility of accidents while working with such large power. We believe a conceptual understanding of three-phase supply would be useful for physics students, with hands-on experience using a simple circuit that can be assembled even in a high school laboratory.

An activity to excite kinaesthetically inclined students about learning physics is described in this article. Using only commonly available materials, a low cost candy floss kit is fabricated by students. A number of physics concepts are embedded contextually in the activity so that students get to learn these concepts in a real world setting rather than in isolation. An interesting aspect of the activity is that students get to eat the candy floss that they have made. The candy floss kit is reusable.

INTERVIEW Using sci-fi to promote physicsRobert Flack, a research fellow at University College London, talks to David Smith about science writing and the consequences for physicists of books like Angels and Demons.

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