Table of contents

We designed an inquiry activity to investigate the question, 'Is water a lubricant?' Placing the same object on surfaces of three different materials, we observed the effect of adding a small amount of water on the coefficient of static friction, ${\mu _s}$. Up to 1 ml of water was added. The results of each surface were graphed and compared with one another. In general, our findings show that the addition of water serves to increase ${\mu _s}$ up to a certain point, before decreasing it. The experiment can be easily replicated in a secondary school science lab. It presents two seemingly opposing phenomena, but they both hold because they occur within their respective boundary conditions.

Many people assume that the orbits of the planets are far more elliptical than they actually are. However, the orbits of all the planets with the exception of Mercury and Mars are nearly perfect circles. If the orbits of the planets are modeled as 26 inch bicycle wheels, the deviation from a perfect circle is less than one millimeter. The Earth's orbit around the Sun is normally depicted as being highly elliptical in order to teach students about Kepler's laws. This has been identified as a possible source of the misconception that it is warmer in summer than winter because the Earth is closer to the Sun. A possible way forward is to first teach students that the orbit of the Earth is essentially circular, like a bicycle wheel, and that seasons are due to the tilt of the Earth's axis of rotation, and then switch to exaggerated elliptical orbits to teach Kepler's laws.

We have designed a simple Arduino-based device, which runs as magnetic polarity detector and field intensity display. It uses an analog Hall sensor together with the Arduino electronic board. The sign of the magnetic flux density allows us to identify the pole of a magnet or electromagnet, while the absolute value allows us to build an intensity display. This device allows us to visualize, among other topics, the basic functional dependences included into the Biot–Savart law, and particularly the changes in magnetic flux density with distance and current for a current-carrying coil or electromagnet.

Sound is central in everyday life, and the physics of sound is present in many parts of physics education. A common way to teach physics concepts is to conduct experiments or show a phenomenon through demonstrations. However, it is far from trivial to get students to experience the wave nature of sound firsthand. This paper presents three experiments where students become part of the demonstration, which allows them to experience the propagation of sound waves, the speed of sound, and wave interference. By having students listen to sound produced by a speaker and filming their reactions with drones from above, properties of sound and its wavelike nature are evident in the students' collective behaviour. Their experience during the experiment is reinforced later by reviewing the material with their teachers in the classroom.

Introductory textbooks often consider circuits in which a switch is used to alternately connect or disconnect a battery from series or parallel combinations of simple components such as resistors and inductors. An example circuit is presented here whose behaviour is contradictory if all components are ideal. A simple modification is proposed for the behaviour of the switch to resolve the contradiction.

The total work done by the static friction force acting on a ball rolling down an incline is zero, despite the fact that work is done by the friction force to increase the rotational kinetic energy of the ball. It is shown that an equal and opposite amount of work is done by the friction force to decrease the translational kinetic energy of the ball.

In this paper, a novel approach to teaching Doppler shift is presented using a readily available Doppler buzzer, free to download spectrum analyser, turntable and electric motor, enable students to recreate the work done by astronomers when finding by astronomers when exoplanets.

We have studied how first-year university science students construct graphs based on hypothetical qualitative physics scenarios. We gave students a questionnaire that asked them to complete two Cartesian graphs in one of three different scenarios (a ball rolling down a track, a beaker being filled with water, the resistance between different points on a metal bar) given as a written piece of text accompanied by a diagram of a hypothetical experiment that included three evenly spaced points on the set-up. Two of the three points were also indicated on the position axis of the partially drawn graph. We found that students can find it hard to translate equal spatial intervals in the experiment to a line graph. We found that most students either did not explain why they put the third point on the graph where they did, or did not plot the point at all. Some students drew unequal intervals on the position axis to indicate unequal time or resistance intervals. The difficulties became more prevalent as the levels of abstraction increased. Our findings suggest that constructing a scale on a qualitative graph requires significant mental effort from the students.

The light phenomena conceptual assessment (LPCA) is a conceptual survey of light phenomena that has been recently established by physics education research (PER) scholars. Studying the LPCA psychometric properties is imperative to inform its measurement validity to potential LPCA users as well as general educational researchers. Classical test theory (CTT) and item response theory (IRT) are two popular statistical frameworks that can be utilized to explore the LPCA measurement validity. To our knowledge, no PER studies have attempted to make a head-to-head comparison of these methods while validating the LPCA. This study is the first to delineate the LPCA measurement by statistically comparing CTT- and IRT-based analyses. The LPCA dataset was drawn from physics students from eight secondary schools presented by Ndihokubwayo and Uwamahoro (2020 Phys. Educ.55 035009). Our results accomplish harmony between the CTT and IRT arguments to estimate the LPCA item performance and student ability probed by the LPCA. They support the idea that the LPCA may be used as an inventory for evaluating conceptual understanding of light phenomena from the low to high ability range of students, and even some LPCA items should be flagged based on CTT- and IRT-based validity arguments. Special considerations for further refinement related to the discriminating power of problematic LPCA items are discussed.

This mixed method research (quantitative and qualitative) is dedicated to analyse the Structure of Kazakhstani University Students' knowledge about the force concept. For this purpose we extend the existing, well known instrument Force Concept Inventory (FCI), applying a three-tier test approach, by asking students to write an explanation of scientific reasons for choosing a certain answer of FCI in the second tier and checking their confidence level in the third tier. Also, the survey was translated into Kazakh language and validated for the Kazakhstan population. The results showed the test has high content and construct validity and high reliability. When analysing the results of the survey, it was found that considering the FCI as the three-tier test significantly affected the number of identified misconceptions and the assessment of scientific knowledge, which implied higher reliability in the results obtained. The obtained data suggest that some incorrect answers should be specified as a lack of knowledge rather than misconceptions, and some correct answers should be considered as a lucky guess rather than scientific knowledge. In the study, we showed the most common misconceptions of the Kazakhstani University students population and detected a gender gap in conceptual understanding of Mechanics, which attracts the attention of researchers for their future studies.

Internationally, the need to modernize school curricula and introduce the concepts of modern physics into schools has been accepted in recent years. Research on introducing Einsteinian physics (EP) to the most effective school age is lagging. The present study aims to evaluate a short intervention in Einstein's physics and determine the school level at which the concepts of EP are optimally comprehended. Therefore, a teaching intervention was carried out to 325 Greek students; 83 students in 6th grade (11–12 years old), 116 students in 9th grade (14–15 years old), and 126 students in 11th grade (16–17 years old). All students completed pre—and post—conceptual and attitudinal questionnaires. According to data analysis, the conceptual performance of students concerning EP improved significantly. In concrete, students of 11th grade have exceeded the conceptual scores, compared with general changes identified to the majority of school grades. Moreover, the study participants had a positive attitude towards science, mostly towards Einstein's physics, before the teaching intervention, which remained at a high level after the intervention. The study generates useful results for introducing modern physics in primary and secondary education.

This article introduces a flexible and reliable tabletop setup, specifically designed to effectively demonstrate fundamental optics concepts to a wide audience, including students from grades 5 through 12, university students, as well as enthusiasts. Leveraging additive manufacturing technology, this work provides an adaptable and accessible avenue for educators, students, and enthusiasts to explore the captivating realm of optics and optoelectronics. The article delves into detailed discussions of the experiments that can be conducted with the proposed setup to elucidate these concepts, presenting their outcomes comprehensively. Moreover, all the Computer Aided Design (CAD) files utilized in this project for 3D printing the essential optical components and systems are made available online for free, enabling users to develop the setup from scratch independently. The proposed setup offers an easily approachable design process, requiring minimal to no prior CAD experience. The experiments performed to illustrate optical concepts are straightforward and safe, making them easily comprehensible and achievable for students at various educational levels.

This study presents the findings of a series of interviews conducted with 17 Italian academic experts in the field of physics. The interviews aimed at exploring various aspects of teaching quantum physics (QP) at the secondary school level. The focus was on evaluating the overall suitability of teaching QP, the benefit of introducing it with an historical approach, the necessary mathematical grounds, as well as foundational and controversial aspects, along with the topics that should be included in the curriculum. Based on the insights gathered from the interviews, a questionnaire was formulated and administered to 31 additional experts, with the primary objective of exploring the experts' perspectives on whether QP should be included in secondary school curricula and the underlying reasons for their stance. Indeed, some of the scholars argue that teaching QP is crucial as it contributes to the promotion of scientific literacy, considering QP as one of the most significant cultural advancements in science over the past centuries. On the other hand, some experts believe that the emphasis should be placed on informing and educating society about quantum technologies and upcoming technological advancements. The second objective of this questionnaire was to further deepen the investigation into the key subjects that specialists deem essential for teaching at the secondary level. The results revealed a consensus among the experts regarding the concepts that hold significant importance, namely atomic energy levels and quantisation, particle behaviour of light, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and probability, and regarding the examples, i.e. the photoelectric effect, spectral lines, and the double slit experiment. The last objective of the questionnaire was to address foundational and controversial aspects of QP that are relevant to high school curricula. This entailed examining the consensus among experts regarding their perspectives on the view of these topics. Lack of such consensus emerged.

Many public schools in Brazil do not have the financial resources to obtain certain equipment for teaching physics. Considering that the Brazilian National Common Curricular Base, a normative document that defines the organic and progressive set of essential learning that all students must develop, determines that the curriculum for teaching electromagnetism for high school encompass electrostatics. It is very important that schools offer laboratory conditions. For this reason, it was proposed to design simple and low-cost construction equipment, so that teachers from the basic education network can build them for their schools, thus improving the quality of teaching for their students. This study aims to gather equipment and experiments, such as electroscope, electrophorus, Leyden jar and Van de Graaf generator, which can be used in the classroom for didactic purposes in physics teaching. The main focus of this work is the construction of equipment for the implementation of a laboratory for the study of electrostatics, which addresses physical concepts seen by high school students of the basic network in Brazil.

Authors of university and secondary school textbooks have resorted to Joule's famous paddle wheel experiment when introducing the topic 'energy'. The explanations provided are misleading. In this study, Joule's original article was used to address this problem.

This study demonstrated how a dye solution's per cent colour degradation (η) may be calculated using the total dissolved solids (TDS) meter. As test solutions, varied concentrations of the brilliant blue solutions were utilised. We compared the results of TDS meter readings for per cent degradation with those of standard spectrometer measurements. The results of our measurements agree with those of a spectrometer. Therefore, TDS meters can be used as an option to measure colour degradation, particularly in laboratories lacking a spectrometer, considering that the price of a TDS meter is much more affordable than that of a spectrometer. A TDS meter with high accuracy must be used for scientific purposes demanding highly precise measurement findings.

With the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI), its potential implications for higher education have become a focal point of interest. This study delves into the capabilities of AI in physics education and offers actionable AI policy recommendations. Using openAI's flagship gpt-3.5-turbo large language model (LLM), we assessed its ability to answer 1337 physics exam questions spanning general certificate of secondary education (GCSE), A-Level, and introductory university curricula. We employed various AI prompting techniques: Zero Shot, in context learning, and confirmatory checking, which merges chain of thought reasoning with reflection. The proficiency of gpt-3.5-turbo varied across academic levels: it scored an average of 83.4% on GCSE, 63.8% on A-Level, and 37.4% on university-level questions, with an overall average of 59.9% using the most effective prompting technique. In a separate test, the LLM's accuracy on 5000 mathematical operations was found to be 45.2%. When evaluated as a marking tool, the LLM's concordance with human markers averaged at 50.8%, with notable inaccuracies in marking straightforward questions, like multiple-choice. Given these results, our recommendations underscore caution: while current LLMs can consistently perform well on physics questions at earlier educational stages, their efficacy diminishes with advanced content and complex calculations. LLM outputs often showcase novel methods not in the syllabus, excessive verbosity, and miscalculations in basic arithmetic. This suggests that at university, there's no substantial threat from LLMs for non-invigilated physics questions. However, given the LLMs' considerable proficiency in writing physics essays and coding abilities, non-invigilated examinations of these skills in physics are highly vulnerable to automated completion by LLMs. This vulnerability also extends to pysics questions pitched at lower academic levels. It is thus recommended that educators be transparent about LLM capabilities with their students, while emphasizing caution against overreliance on their output due to its tendency to sound plausible but be incorrect.

The unusual etymology of 31 words commonly used in introductory physics is presented in detail. This work can inspire class conversations on the interplay between science and culture, the mutual influence of cultures, and doing physics in non-English languages.

Commercial disco balls provide a safe, effective and instructive way of observing the Sun. We explore the optics of solar projections with disco balls, and find that while sunspot observations are challenging, the solar disk and its changes during eclipses are easy and fun to observe. We explore the disco ball's potential for observing the moon and other bright astronomical phenomena.

When two balls collide head-on in an elastic collision, the work done on each ball by the impact force is equal to the change in kinetic energy of each ball. A calculation of the work done during the collision is presented as an interesting extension of the work-energy principle, including an example where one of the balls is infinitely heavy.

Determine the centre of mass (CM) of standard weights is needed when two weights with different heights are compared. However, reproducing related experiments is difficult for high school or higher education institutions with non-expensive instrumentation or low budgets to construct specialised devices. This work addresses that problem in a two-way approach: dynamic video-based analysis and making a low-cost static device with Lego bricks. Published scientific papers support both methods. The experimental results of the video-based procedure were used to fit a polynomial regression model to find the CM location. On the other hand, the Lego device approach gives the ubication of the CM directly. Both methods were compared against geometric formulae publicly available to locate the CM of standard weights. The whole three stages project could be used in a senior high school or undergraduate physics course to teach about the comparison and compatibility of methods in experimental physics.

The question of possibly igniting a fusion chain reaction in the atmosphere by detonating nuclear weapons is analysed with some basic concepts of nuclear physics and order-of-magnitude estimates. This scenario is shown to be impossible in any realistic situation.

Calculating time intervals in motions with non-constant acceleration is a challenging task. In most cases, advanced mathematical tools are required. Therefore, these topics are usually not suitable for presentation at the high school level. In this paper, the case of the motion of a block of mass attached to the end of a linear spring on a rough surface is revisited. The goal is to find an elementary method for calculating the time interval required to cover a distance between two arbitrary positions suitable for teaching at the high school level. To accomplish this goal, a mathematically 'equivalent problem' involving the combination of simple harmonic motions between two different equilibrium positions is considered. It effectively conveys that with this approach, the calculation of time intervals relies solely on simple trigonometry. In addition, students can draw interesting conclusions, such as the linear decay of the oscillation's amplitude and the independence of the period from the oscillation's amplitude.

In New South Wales (NSW), Australia, since 2019, senior high school students have been experiencing a transformed Physics syllabus. This syllabus takes a 'back to basics' approach where core principles and problem solving are prioritised, and was a response to the earlier syllabus, which was much more contextual, including the history of ideas and technologies and a wide range of 'option' topics. This earlier syllabus (2001–2018) attracted significant attention for straying away from 'real' physics, for including too much 'sociology', for being 'dumbed down' and 'feminised'. Four years on, NSW teachers share their perspectives on some of the most well-publicised and contentious views on the new syllabus. Teachers mostly agreed that the new syllabus was more 'rigorous', higher quality and more mathematical; they also generally enjoyed teaching the subject. However, there were also some disagreements amongst the teachers, such as whether the new syllabus excluded certain groups of students and whether the aims of the syllabus in achieving 'depth', were met.

This study investigates how students utilized artificial intelligence (AI)-generated images to represent their understanding of general relativity concepts. Ten high school students participated in an extracurricular course on relativity theory. Using AI chatbot, these students created visual representations of 'relativity' before and after the course. The produced images, the accompanying prompts, student interviews, and their test scores were analysed to examine students' conceptual understanding and interactions with AI. Students with a clearer understanding of relativity tended to focus their prompts on more central concepts like spacetime deformation. In contrast, those with a weaker understanding leaned towards more tangential ideas. The clarity of their prompts was directly linked to more effective AI interactions, leading to more meaningful image generation. Despite this, some students faced challenges in crafting coherent prompts, resulting in less relevant images, indicating that understanding the concept does not always translate into successful AI engagement. The study underscores the potential of AI-generated images as a tool to illuminate student conceptualisation and interaction skills with AI in the context of complex physics concepts, offering a novel approach to evaluating understanding in advanced scientific topics.

Low-cost experiments have the advantage of being affordable to schools, universities, and families. In the particular case of optics, these experiments can be important to help students understand the properties of light and optical phenomena. In this article, we demonstrate optical experiments to be carried out at home by students learning remotely. These experiments were designed and performed at the 16th Summer School in Physics, which is a five-day activity for high school students organized by the University of Porto. This activity was organized remotely, with all lectures and activities being performed through video conferencing. The materials needed for the proposed experiments were sent by post to students before the beginning of school. The students were able to build optical experiments from scratch, perform measurements, analyse data and present their findings on the last day of the school in a public session dedicated to online presentations.

Introductory physics courses often necessitate students to graphically represent one-dimensional (1-D) motion and derive various physical parameters. Physical quantities are often solved by calculating either slope or the area under the graph. Instructors and students who do not have access to paid software must plot graphs by hand. This paper explores three introductory physics examples related to 1-D motion, and employs ChatGPT 3.5 to generate scripts that will produce graphs from raw data. It can generate scripts, based on accurate user inputs, in free programming languages like Python and/or GNU Octave to enable efficient graph plotting. Examples will be provided on calculating the slope of a distance–time graph and determining the area under a velocity–time graph. Given raw data, ChatGPT 3.5 may exhibit occasional inaccuracies when solving for physical parameters. However, user can communicate in English to modify the output. The author does not endorse the use of ChatGPT for academic misconducts such as assisting students to cheat in problem solving. Instead, ChatGPT is presented as a tool to enhance data visualisation for both instructors and students, which can potentially improve learning environments in introductory physics. This paper lays the groundwork for future initiatives, beyond the plotting of 1-D motion graphs, aiming to integrate artificial intelligence to assist more complex motion studies in physics learning environments.

In this paper, a device is introduced to enlarge micro deformation of steel wire by using Moire fringe formed by double grating, and then measure the Young modulus. Since the angle of the double grating in the device is difficult to control accurately, and it is difficult to accurately achieve the desired magnification, we chose to calculate the magnification by measuring the width of the Moire fringe, and then conducted subsequent measurement. The experimental device proposed in this article has a simple structure and low cost, and can be used as a combination of optical and mechanics experiment content for undergraduate students.

Measurement of self-inductance and mutual-inductance has been demonstrated as a laboratory experiment with great simplicity. The novelty of this demonstration lies in its straightforward circuitry and methodology, enabling the experiment accessible to students with minimal prerequisite knowledge. A coil-pair setup was constructed using discarded common household articles, costing very low but provides high quality throughput in teaching-learning experience. The demonstration can be easily conducted online using a laptop without the need of extra power supply. The experiment suits for high school and pre-university students, as evident by twenty first-semester undergraduate physics and electronics students who found it both satisfying and enjoyable with a relatively flat learning curve.

Permanent magnets are used in many current industrial as well as home appliances today. Frequently, kitchen plastic magnets could be found at the refrigerators at home. However, the magnetic domain structure of such permanent plastic foils is not known and understood to the users at all. The purpose of this paper is to explain the magnetic domain structure of plastic magnets with Halbach array and ferrite or neodymium magnet polarization orientation. Principles of magnetic field visualization foils (magnetic flux detector and colour changing viewing film) is explained and demonstrated on multipole magnetic structures. Experiments with magnetic polarization reversal by the strong neodymium magnet in weaker ferrite magnetic material is demonstrated. All presented principles are collected in the simple magnetic set and suggested for education of school children of different ages. Elementary school children below 10 years age are mostly interested only in making hidden pictures in magnetic paper and ferrite magnet. Older school children of 11–12 years are able to absorb more knowledge about behaviour and properties of magnets.

Over 1500 balloons are launched every day, from every continent on Earth, to provide forecasting of tropospheric weather. Similar balloons, which can fly to the edge of space (>30 km), can be used for other science projects. Professional scientists, military users, commercial organisations, and interested amateurs, all fly payloads that provide a relatively low-cost means to reach the upper atmosphere. Weather ballooning is perfectly suited to student education and has been carried out for decades by groups of school, college, and university students. Here we report on one such a project. During March/April 2023 a series of balloons were launched from Sodankylä, Finland, in order to study the particle and radiation environment, along with ozone, in the stratosphere. Inexpensive off-the-shelf Geiger-counters were part of a payload flown to investigate how the radiation environment changed over time. Balloon payloads can be tracked with simple and inexpensive radio receivers. Similar projects to the one outlined here should be possible for any school, college, or university that has a reasonably well-equipped workshop, a group of interested and capable students, and a desire to investigate and learn something new about the planet we live on.

In this work, the second generation of Lato Lato (Lato Lato 2.0) has been used to demonstrate the concept of conservation of momentum. The Lato Lato 2.0 toys are two identical solid balls that are attached to the stick handle via a stick. The balls are meant to rotate in response to the movements of the stick handle. With the assistance of these toys, the concepts of action-reaction forces, two objects colliding, and conservation of momentum are easily understood. As an alternative to commonly used apparatus such as the Newton Cradle, these inexpensive toys can undoubtedly elucidate the concepts of conservation of momentum. Therefore, the Lato Lato 2.0 can be used for pedagogical purposes in learning physics. Indeed, physics is more enjoyable to learn and easier to understand through demonstrations.

Heat is lost by the system due to temperature difference between the hot object and surroundings. Two models which explain cooling are conduction-convection method and radiation method. During an automobile engine operation, both engine and engine oil get heated up. To overcome the problem of excessive heat generated, coolant is used to cool down the system. In present study, cooling rate of engine oil kept at high temperature was studied in the absence and presence of coolant. In the absence of coolant, engine oil follows the natural law of cooling stated by Newton and follows the exponential decay in temperature. Cooling rate constant was estimated through fitting first order and second order exponential decay with experimental data and found to be $3.35\,\; \times \,\;{10^{ - 4}}\;{{\text{s}}^{ - 1}}$ and $2.39\; \times \;{10^{ - 4}}\;{{\text{s}}^{ - 1}}\,$(in first $50$ min) respectively. Cooling rate in the presence of coolant was studied which shows rapid decrease in temperature for first few minutes which may be attributed to high heat capacity of coolant which surrounds the hot engine oil. After 50 min of cooling, temperature of both fluids found to decrease exponentially. Thus, the use of coolant was found to absorb the heat content from the engine oil rapidly in comparison to natural environment. Cooling rate constant were estimated through fitting experimental data and found to be $2.44\,\;\, \times \,\;{10^{ - 4}}\;{{\text{s}}^{ - 1}}$ and $2.43\,\; \times \;\,{10^{ - 4}}\;{{\text{s}}^{ - 1}}\,$ for engine oil and coolant respectively. The percentage change in temperature of oil in first two minutes in the presence of coolant was about 70% which is much higher in comparison to cooling without the use of coolant which was about 16% only. For data acquisition of temperature of engine oil and coolant, MAX6675 module with K-type thermocouple is used which were interfaced with the Arduino board.

The imposition of martial law and power outages in Ukraine made the first semester of the 2022/2023 academic year at Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute a challenge for lecturers and students, especially in learning the general physics course. An asynchronous learning mode became the only possible form in such a situation, so the problem of increasing the efficiency of conducting a lecture, problem sessions, and laboratory work in general physics arose. This study aims to describe the implementation of the discipline of general physics (part 1) promoted in an asynchronous mode by lecturers of the Department of General Physics and Modeling of Physical Processes. We verified that in crisis conditions, it is essential to: (i) provide students with all the necessary material on Moodle course and YouTube channel, allowing them to learn the theoretical material, solve the homework problems, and analyse the data from laboratory work, (ii) give feedback and consultations to students via Zoom/Telegram chat upon request, (iii) give the possibility to perform the laboratory work both in the virtual regime and as YouTube demonstration. The results of the survey of 82 students who studied the general physics course taking into account the recommendations mentioned above revealed that the majority of the surveyed students were completely/to a greater extent satisfied with the level of organisation of asynchronous learning, as well as the level of knowledge obtained, which undoubtedly indicates the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach.

Paul traps are devices that confine particles using an alternating electric field and have been used in undergraduate experimental classes at universities. Owing to the requirement of a high voltage ($\gt$10³ V), Paul traps are not used in middle and high schools. Therefore, we developed an all-in-one-type Paul trap, including a high-voltage transformer. The Paul trap can be equipped with two different types of electrode attachments, ring-type and linear-type, and the trap image can be observed using a built-in web camera. For example, the charge-to-mass ratio of particles was measured with different types of attachments, and reasonable values were obtained. These types of trap devices are currently used at several educational facilities in Japan.

The latest developments in information technology have made it possible to have experimental activities that can be accessed remotely. This article offers an explanation about the development of experimental tools that can be accessed remotely based on Archimedes' principle. The equipment has been developed by adding a stepper motor to control the object to submerge in liquid. The stepper motor is controlled by Arduino Uno using the graphical user interface (GUI) developed using LabVIEW. Data sampling process uses a force sensor that is controlled using the same GUI. Based on the equipment that has been developed, experiments on the principle of Archimedes' can be done online through websites. The experimental results agree with theoretical calculations and with previous research. Therefore, the developed apparatus can be used as an experimental-based learning tool in an online platform.

A damped oscillation is characterized by the diminishing amplitude of an oscillating system resulting from the dissipation of energy. A crucial example of damped oscillations involves a block of mass attached to the end of a linear spring, experiencing a damping force proportional to the object's velocity and acting in opposition to the direction of its motion. For small values of the damping constant, the amplitude decreases exponentially over time. Typically, this behavior is introduced at the secondary education level without providing a justification. In this paper, a new approach tailored for the secondary education level is introduced to explain the aforementioned exponential decrease without relying on advanced mathematical tools. In addition, utilizing this analysis simplifies the demonstration of why the exponential decrease in amplitude is applicable only for small damping forces. It is also worth noting that the methods used to derive this result can be applied in various areas, including the derivation of the equation that connects the root mean square value of the AC sinusoidal current to its maximum value.

This report presents two hands-on activities for high school students that focus on the preparation of nanomaterials in a relatively simple manner. Carbon dots (CDs) were chosen as a demonstration. The article is categorised into two parts. The first part roughly performs the same work as a previous publication by Jumeng Wei, in which ultrasonication was utilised to cleave paper ash. Furthermore, we also attempted to use magnetic stirring or even hand stirring as an alternative method. The second section offers a perspective on the use of an electrochemical method to prepare CDs using graphite rods from recycled batteries. In the scope of this article, instead of using high-analysis techniques to prove the availability of CDs at the nanoscale, our work aims to illustrate green, sustainable physics and demonstrate the way that synthetic physicists utilise waste materials via practical education. The designed experiment suggests an integration between physics and chemistry that might be used for the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics experience of high school students.

This article describes a new approach for determining the specific heat of solid and liquid samples in an educational laboratory setting. The experiment employed automated data collection, using Arduino^® to record temperatures as the system cooled. Samples of water, ethyl alcohol, lead, and aluminium were analysed by exchanging heat with preheated water in a non-insulated container. To identify the moments when the samples attained thermal equilibrium with the reference liquid, we employed the cooling curve adjusted using Newton's law of cooling. This correction allowed us to uncover the exact points of equilibrium with enhanced accuracy. The results, both for solid and liquid samples, indicated the effectiveness of the method, due to its reasonable proximity to the expected values (e% < 10). This approach goes beyond the conventional calorimeter, proving its viability in testing various samples and thus enhancing research on the thermal properties of different materials.

Classical physics results are often taught purely from the theoretical side. Key results, especially in electromagnetism, are typically not explored experimentally, and in applications students are then expected to leap straight into more complex scenarios that make use of these principles in electronics, sensors and instrumentation. This is unfortunate because not all individuals are equally able to learn well purely from the mathematical angle, and even those who do are not exposed to exploring the magnitude of competing effects, for example isolating a particular magnetic field signal from the background of the Earth's field. An experiment is presented here to test Ampère's law with a setup that can be assembled out of everyday materials with minimal components—a smartphone, a DC power supply, wires—in a procedure that can be completed in just a few hours. The data from the three magnetic field sensors of the phones, together with the gyroscope sensors providing position, are recorded and numerically integrated. The experiment is also demonstrated using sensors collected by an Arduino board instead of a smartphone. The experiment allows to measure the net current carried by wires inside the closed path over which the magnetic field is integrated, i.e. Ampère's law. This experimental approach to exploring Ampère's Law can be adapted towards high school or university demonstrations, depending on the level of accuracy and detail that one aims to pursue.

The oscillation of a bar magnet along the axis of a closed loop solenoid has been studied quantitatively using an ultrasonic sensor and Arduino microcontroller-based platform. Real-time displacement of the oscillatory magnet with and without the solenoid shows an additional damping effect due to electromagnetic induction in the presence of the closed-loop solenoid. Variation of the induced current in the solenoid circuit has been analyzed over several cycles by simultaneous recording of the voltage developed across two resistors using 'analogread' library function. Energy drained from the oscillator due to electromagnetic damping has been compared with the energy lost in Joule heating of the solenoid circuit. A phase plot for the underdamped oscillator was generated using the fitting parameter values of the curve fitted with the position vs. time data points on the plot. This portable and inexpensive microcontroller-based design is well suited for STEM education of high school and for sophomores in an undergraduate physics course.

We investigated the emf (V) induced with time (t) in a search coil due to an oscillating bar magnet along the axis of the coil using the IOLab device. Experimental data was simultaneously collected with the force sensor which tracked the oscillation of the magnet and the voltage sensor which gave real-time readings of the induced emf in the coil. For small amplitudes of oscillation, where the predominant interaction involved the top end of the magnet cutting through the plane of the coil, the V–t graph appeared sinusoidal. With increasing amplitudes of oscillation, the V–t graph started to lose its symmetry with an initial kink appearing within one half cycle and which eventually became an increasing hump as the amplitude of oscillation increased further due to the influence from the bottom end of the bar magnet which affected the overall rate of change of magnetic flux linkage through the coil. The data collected from the experiment was visualised using a novel parametric series of plots of induced emf (V) with force (F). We discussed various cases of the V–F parametric plot. Using a suitable Φ–h function and taking into consideration the rate of change of magnetic flux linkage with respect to displacement along the coil, we discussed how the emf induced changes with time with increasing amplitudes of oscillation.

This paper demonstrates a variation of the rubber sheet experiment (Gravitational Waves Work Like This Drill on Spandex) for measuring the properties of modelled gravitational waves. Mechanically induced waves on the rubber sheet are observed by a high-speed camera and the slow-motion videos are analysed with the Tracker program. We describe the theoretical background and the execution of the measurement process. The measured displacements are suitable for modelling real gravitational-wave signals and determinating properties of the sources.

I demonstrate in the answer some of the resonances that occur when the strings of the piano are free to vibrate.

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