Thermal Physics Tutorials with Python Simulations

As part of our effort to develop a concept inventory for statistical mechanics, we have interviewed a number of students who have taken a thermal physics course, at both the undergraduate and graduate level, about their understanding of the statistical mechanics topics taught in the thermal physics curriculum. The questions asked during the interviews were formulated with input from experts in the field, and will later be fleshed out into multiple-choice questions. Here, we report some of our intermediate findings about the students understanding of some of the topics.

An understanding of thermal physics is crucial to much of modern physics, chemistry, and engineering. This book provides a modern introduction to the main principles that are foundational to thermal physics, thermodynamics, and statistical mechanics. The key concepts are carefully presented in a clear way, and new ideas are illustrated with worked examples as well as a description of the historical background to their discovery. Applications are presented to subjects as diverse as stellar astrophysics, information and communication theory, condensed matter physics, and climate change. Each chapter concludes with detailed exercises. This second edition of the text maintains the structure and style of the first edition but extends its coverage of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics to include several new topics, including osmosis, diffusion problems, Bayes theorem, radiative transfer, the Ising model, and Monte Carlo methods. New examples and exercises have been added throughout.

This mixed methods study focuses on the use of instructional videos in an undergraduate physics classroom. Previous research has explored the effects of videos on student performance however, limited research exists on the effects of science instructional videos with embedded quiz questions on student achievement. This study compares students’ performance when a problem-solving physics video is presented to students with embedded quiz questions versus videos with quiz questions presented after the video. Additionally, the study explores students’ attitudes and preferences toward the positioning of questions in videos when learning independently. A total of 111 college students enrolled in the introductory physics course at the large Midwestern University were randomly assigned into two groups to participate in the intervention. Students completed pre and post surveys, watched instructional video and completed quiz that covered content discussed in the video that either was embedded or was presented post-video watching. The quantitative analysis did not result in statistical significance in students’ performance when groups were compared. However, qualitative analysis demonstrated strong student preferences toward the use of video in STEM classrooms when scientific problem-solving content is taught, stronger engagement with content when quizzes were embedded, and desire for immediate feedback. The study has implications for faculty who use videos and quizzing in their classroom or consider using videos in the future.

Prominent research physicist Sid Nagel writes about the fragmentation of physics, but does not include the growing separation between physics and physics education. Over the past 30 years, the American Association of Physics Teachers, once a society of physicists interested in teaching, has become largely a society of educators interested in physics. The number of AAPT members who are research physicists has declined while the number of physicists from high schools and two-year colleges has increased.On past occasions, top physicists like Ed Purcell and I. I. Rabi could be seen at AAPT meetings. Now, noted research physicists rarely come to a meeting unless they are being honored and asked to give an invited talk. And the joint AAPT/American Physical Society meetings that brought research physicists and physics educators together are no more.The 2002 conference of the International Research Group on Physics Teaching (GIREP) in Sweden, with a thoroughly international group of participants, had as a theme the flight from physics. Physics enrollments and degrees are down in most countries, and not one research physicist of note was among the 400 conference participants.The undergraduate physics curriculum once united physicists. We bragged that, unlike the chemists, any physicist could teach any undergraduate physics course. The knowledge base provided by the undergraduate curriculum gave physicists in all research areas the ability to move from their frontier research position, take a few steps back toward that base, and find common ground with physicists in other specialties. That ability is no longer available. The chain of logic from a specialty back to a common base is too long. So we do not talk to each other—hence Nagel’s crisis.My introductory physics text of the 1950s, Sears and Zemansky (Addison-Wesley, 1955), is a black-and-white version of current physics textbooks. My introductory texts in chemistry and biology, however, bear no resemblance to current textbooks in those fields. Students are introduced to chemistry and biology in ways that represent the disciplines as they are today. Physicists, though, introduce students to their discipline as they did 50 years ago. Yet look at how physics has changed.If we reform the structure and content of undergraduate physics to represent more accurately what contemporary research physicists do, we might establish a new knowledge base that would provide common ground for our discipline. Then, perhaps, we could talk to each other once again.© 2003 American Institute of Physics.

Abstract. This article explores the possibilities and advantages of using the Python programming language together with Arduino robotics kits in the process of training future computer science teachers in pedagogical educational institutions. Considerable emphasis is placed on analyzing the principles of operation of the simplest programs and devices that can be used to visualize the possibilities of using the Arduino platform and Python libraries to create robots that can be implemented in the educational process and everyday life. The authors have developed the program code and presented a working model of a robot assembled and programmed on the basis of Arduino components to measure humidity in computer laboratories and create automatic plant irrigation systems to maintain proper conditions in classrooms. The article presents an example of integrating the learning of the Python programming language with the use of Arduino robotics kits. This method is aimed at improving the quality of training of future computer science teachers, expanding their methodological arsenal and ensuring the ability to teach students using innovative means. The results of the study and the developed teaching and learning materials will help to interest students in STEM education and prepare a new generation of computer science teachers for the challenges of the modern technological world, expand their methodological arsenal and develop the ability to use integrated technical, engineering and mathematical solutions to solve theoretical and practical problems. In addition, this study can serve as a guide to popularize the use of Arduino and Python in educational institutions, and encourage future computer science teachers to implement STEM and hands-on teaching methods, which will contribute to better student learning and improve the quality of professional education in the field of information technology in general. In general, the study opens up a wide range of opportunities for using modern digital technologies in professional education and stimulates interest in STEM education among computer science teachers and students, thereby contributing to the development of a new generation of engineers and technology leaders. Further research could be aimed at developing specific training courses and methods for integrating the Python programming language and Arduino robotics kits into STEM education. It is important to create interdisciplinary STEM courses with the participation of teachers of computer science, physics, mathematics, vocational education in the IT industry, etc.

In recent years extensive research has been carried out to evaluate and highlight the declining number of graduates from science related courses. Following this, several initiatives have been designed and implemented throughout the Republic of Ireland to combat the problem of low retention rates in undergraduate science courses and to introduce the use of more effective instructional methodologies that promote the active role of the learner while also encouraging the facilitative role of the teacher. This paper examines Concept Mapping, one such initiative that has been implemented in the University of Limerick over the last two years. The research presented here is part of a large project that aims to explore and evaluate the potential of Concept Mapping as an educational tool in physics education. This paper, however, sets out to specificallyanswer the following research question: What impact, if any, did Concept Mapping have on four particular aspects of physics learning? The paper examines the effect Concept Mapping had on understanding theory, identifying physics concepts, linking prior and new knowledge and, finally, problem solving.

There are diverse teaching methodologies to promote both collaborative and individual work in undergraduate physics courses. However, few educational studies seek to understand how students learn and apply new knowledge through open-ended activities that require mathematical modeling and experimentation focused on environmental problems. Here, we propose a novel home experiment to simulate the dynamics of a flue gas under temperature inversion and model it as damped harmonic motion. After designing and conducting the experiment, twenty six first year students enrolled in STEM majors answered six qualitative questions to inform us about their epistemological beliefs regarding their learning process. Their answers imply that this type of open-ended experiments may facilitate students’ understanding of physical phenomena and point to the significance of physics instructors as promoters of epistemological development. In general, students described this activity as a positive experience that helped them connect an environmental phenomenon with a fundamental physics concept.

Information communication technologies are rapidly finding a niche in practical work in science laboratories in both schools and tertiary institutions. This paper reports on a project investigating students' learning processes when video analysis and data logging practical work were used in a first-year undergraduate physics course. Student volunteers were group interviewed. Preliminary findings suggest that students were motivated by the tasks and perceived that the tasks helped them understand their physics concepts. The manual movement of the cart and the freeze-frame element of the video analysis were viewed positively by the students. Further analysis indicates that students used elements of the video analysis and data logging practical work to reinforce already existing ideas rather than challenge the robustness of their existing ideas.

The fundamental aim of this research is to develop a face detection system for a quadcopter in order to follow the face object. This research has two main stages, namely the face detection stage and the position control system. The face detection algorithm used in this research is the haar cascade method which is run using the python and OpenCV programming languages. The algorithm worked well, getting around 16fps on a low spec computer without a GPU unit. The results of the face detection algorithm are proven to be able to recognize faces from the camera installed on the DJI Tello mini drone. The mini drone was chosen because it is small and light, so it is harmless, and testing can be carried out indoors. Besides, the DJI Tello can be programmed easily using the python programming language. The drone’s position is then compared with the set point in the middle of the image to obtain errors so that control signals can be calculated for up/down, forward/backward, and right/left movements. From the testing results, the response speed that occurs in the right/left and up/down movements is less than 2 seconds, while for the forward/backward movement, it is less than 3 seconds.

The calculation of the electrostatic potential and/or electrostatic field due to a continuous distribution of charge is a well-covered topic in all calculus-based undergraduate physics courses. The most common approach is to consider bodies with uniform charge distribution and obtain the quantity of interest by integrating over the contributions from all the differential charges. The examples of a uniformly charged disk and ring are prominent in many physics textbooks since they illustrate well this technique at least for special points or directions of symmetry where the calculations are relatively simple. Surprisingly, the case of a uniformly charged annulus, namely, an annular disk, is largely absent from the literature. One might speculate that a uniformly charged annulus is not extremely interesting since after all, it is a uniformly charged disk with a central circular hole. However, we show in this work that the electrostatic potential created by a uniformly charged annulus has features that are much more interesting than one might have expected. A uniformly charged annulus interpolates between a uniformly charged disk and ring. However, the results of this work suggest that a uniformly charged annulus has such electrostatic features that may be essentially viewed as ring-like. The ring-like characteristics of the electrostatic potential of a uniformly charged annulus are evident as soon as a hole is present no matter how small the hole might be. The solution of this problem allows us to draw attention to the pedagogical aspects of this overlooked, but very interesting case study in electrostatics. In our opinion, the problem of a uniformly charged annulus and its electrostatic properties deserves to be treated at more depth in all calculus-based undergraduate physics courses covering electricity and magnetism.

The behavior of an unbalanced rocking cylinder is investigated as an example of a non-isochronous oscillator. The dependence of the period on the maximum angular swing is found to be more pronounced than in the pendulum case and tunable with a suitable choice of masses and moments of inertia. Computer acquisition of the force exerted on the horizontal plane allows comparison of the dynamical behavior of the system with computational predictions. The system deserves consideration for theoretical and experimental investigations in undergraduate physics courses for the nontrivial effects arising from the displacement of the center of mass from the geometrical cylinder axis and the anharmonic character of the oscillations.

Although photometry, the measurement of the intensity and distribution of visible light, is important in many areas, most undergraduate physics courses do not include this topic. We present a simple introduction to key concepts in photometry, and as a fun example, we investigate the optics of a Jack O’Lantern.

In this work we present a simple experiment to introduce the concept of displacement current. It can be done in an undergraduate physics course with standard electronics available in a teaching laboratory.

A practical introduction to radio frequency electronics for NMR probe builders

With COVID-19 pandemic forcing academic institutions to shift to emergency remote teaching (ERT), teachers worldwide are attempting several strategies to engage their learners. Even though existing research in online learning suggests that effectiveness of the online session is more dependent on pedagogical design rather than technology feature, teachers may still focus on the intricacies of the technology. In this paper, we present the evolution of an active learning pedagogy, supported by technology (eBook reader—BookRoll, Analytics Dashboard—LAViEW), for an undergraduate physics classroom across a semester that was affected by the lockdown due to pandemic. The technology-enhanced pedagogy evolved in three phases—technology used in “Content Focus” mode, technology used in “Problem Focus” mode and technology used in “Learning Dialogue Focus” mode. The entire activities were designed and implemented within the technology-enhanced and evidence-based education and learning (TEEL) ecosystem, which supported integration of learning technologies with analytics system. Comparison of the student’s learning logs indicated that there was a sustained engagement in the learning activities conducted during the blended (before lockdown) and online mode (during lockdown). We had conducted one-way ANOVA to compare the post-test scores for each teaching phase and found statistically significant differences in the latter phases. A preliminary qualitative analysis of the learner artifacts generated as memos in BookRoll during each phase revealed that students were posing conceptual clarifications during the latter phases. These were also having greater alignment with the session agenda and showed construction of new knowledge based on the seed knowledge provided during the instructor–learner interaction sessions. The study provides key insights into how reflection and practice by both learner and teacher improves the acceptance of technology-enabled pedagogy.