We have developed an eye-catching demonstration that showcases a variety of physics topics from total internal reflection to electrostatics to non-Newtonian fluid dynamics, including the Kaye effect. The essential components of the demonstration include a vertical stream of liquid soap in which a laser pointer is internally reflected, and which…

Our high school optics course finishes with an assignment that students usually appreciate. They must take pictures of everyday situations representing optical phenomena such as reflection, refraction, or dispersion, and post them on Instagram. When the photos were presented to the class, one student revealed an intriguing photo, similar to Fig.…

Energy Theater is a dynamic, full-body activity that engages all students in representing the flow of energy in various phenomena, such as a light bulb burning steadily or a refrigerator cooling food. In Energy Theater, each participant acts as a unit of energy that has one form at a time. Regions on the floor correspond to objects in a physical…

A challenge: Can you create a stable top from a single paper clip? Several interesting solutions to this problem were provided by Takao Sakai from Japan, the requirement of each being that the center of gravity be located on the vertical y-axis at the center of the top. In the simplest configuration, we see that there exists a single angle ?…

LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, are cheap, easy to purchase, and thus commonly used in physics instruction as indicators of electric current or as sources of light (Fig. 1). In our opinion LEDs represent a unique piece of equipment that can be used to collect experimental evidence, and construct and test new ideas in almost every unit of a general…

The damped oscillator is discussed in every high school textbook or introductory physics course, and a large number of papers are devoted to it in physics didactics journals. Papers typically focus on kinematic and dynamic aspects and less often on energy. Among the latter, some are devoted to the peculiar decreasing behavior of energy…

Traditional physics labs at the high school level are often closed-ended. The outcomes are known in advance and students replicate procedures recommended by the teacher. Over the years, I have come to appreciate the great opportunities created by allowing students investigative freedom in physics laboratories. I have realized that a laboratory…

Humans have evolved to follow their intuition, but as any high school physics teacher knows, relying on intuition often leads students to predict outcomes that are at odds with evidence. Over the years, we have attempted to make this intuition-outcome disparity a central theme running throughout our physics classes, with limited success. Part of…

In 1879, in the midst of the debate between English and continental scientists about the nature of cathode rays, William Crookes conducted an experiment in which a small mill or "paddle wheel" was pushed along tracks inside a cathode ray tube (CRT) (similar to that shown in Fig. 1) when connected to a high-voltage induction coil. Crookes…

Humans have evolved to follow their intuition, but as any high school physics teacher knows, relying on intuition often leads students to predict outcomes that are at odds with evidence. Over the years, we have attempted to make this intuition-outcome disparity a central theme running throughout our physics classes, with limited success. Part of…

I am a volunteer reader at the Princeton unit of "Learning Ally" (formerly "Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic") and I recently discovered that high school students are introduced to the concept of quantization well before they take chemistry and physics. For the past few months I have been reading onto computer files a…

In this paper, I present a low-cost interactive experiment for measuring the strength of Earth's local magnetic field. This activity can be done in most high schools or two-year physics laboratories with limited resources, yet will have a tremendous learning impact. This experiment solidifies the three-dimensional nature of Earth's…

Since 1987, the Statistical Research Center at the American Institute of Physics has regularly conducted a nationwide survey of high school physics teachers to take a closer look at physics in U.S. high schools. We contact all of the teachers who teach at least one physics course at a nationally representative sample of all U.S. high schools-both…

The traditional lab report is known to create several pedagogical shortcomings in the introductory physics course, particularly with regard to promoting student engagement and encouraging quality writing. This paper discusses the use of a "letter home" written to a non-physicist as an alternative to lab reports that creates a more…

Glow sticks are a popular Halloween staple familiar to most of our students. The production of light via a chemical reaction is called "chemiluminescence," and glow sticks are often used as demonstrations and experiments in the chemistry classroom to study reaction rates as a function of temperature. A black light can be used to…