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Cross, Rod – Physics Teacher, 2022
What happens when a perfectly elastic ball collides with a completely inelastic ball? It is shown that the outcome depends on the stiffness of each ball. A standard textbook problem in mechanics is to calculate the outcome of a head-on collision between two balls using conservation of momentum and kinetic energy. It is easily shown that the…
Descriptors: Physics, Science Instruction, Mechanics (Physics), Science Experiments
Cross, Rod – Physics Teacher, 2022
The trajectory of a ball in air is affected by aerodynamic drag and lift. In general, the trajectory needs to be calculated numerically since the acceleration varies with time in both the horizontal and vertical directions. If the trajectory remains approximately parabolic, then simple analytical solutions can be found, giving useful insights into…
Descriptors: Science Instruction, Scientific Concepts, Physics, Computation
Frodyma, Marc – Physics Teacher, 2022
Teaching special relativity to lower-division students is challenging because results such as time dilation, length contraction, and frame dependence of simultaneity are counterintuitive. The literature is extensive, so only a brief list is given here, with articles divided roughly between discussions of general principles and calculations applied…
Descriptors: Scientific Principles, Science Instruction, Physics, Scientific Concepts
Hull, Michael M.; Becker, Manuel; Budimaier, Florian; Abe, Haruki; Funahashi, Haruhiko – Physics Teacher, 2023
In this article, we will present the HEC BB bag, a simple but elegant model originally invented to help students imagine how air molecules move around in vacuum. The HEC BB bag is made by packing 20 to 30 BBs in a resealable plastic bag of several tens of square centimeters (see Fig. 1). When inflated fully via a straw, the volume of the bag is…
Descriptors: Teaching Methods, Physics, Demonstrations (Educational)
Wörner, C. H. – Physics Teacher, 2023
Bounded by the statements of Feynman and Galileo, I describe certain tricks that can be useful for the teaching of physics. In particular, I describe the calculation of the center of mass (centroid) of an arc of circumference and a circular sector. For this purpose, I also use Pappus's theorems. An Appendix is available with Archimedes' method to…
Descriptors: Physics, Computation, Scientific Concepts, Science Instruction
Marx, Jeffrey – Physics Teacher, 2023
The various aspects of projectile motion have been analyzed many times in this journal. As a sample, over the years, authors have investigated particular details of the path of a projectile and different situations for launching projectiles. Others have written about a nifty way to determine the maximum height of a projectile, finding the range of…
Descriptors: Science Activities, Motion, Physics, Science Instruction
Greenslade, Thomas B., Jr. – Physics Teacher, 2021
About 30 years ago I taught a series of summer enrichment programs for high school physics teachers, using funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes. I deliberately chose teachers from smaller cities and towns who were unlikely to have contact with other physics teachers. One of my more interesting teachers came from a rural area in a far…
Descriptors: Physics, Science Instruction, Mechanics (Physics), Secondary School Science
Darmendrail, L.; Müller, A. – Physics Teacher, 2021
The standing vertical jump (SVJ) is a classical topic in Newtonian mechanics (Fig. 1). Although the topic has also been treated by others (other terms used are "standing high jump" or "squat jump"), the present paper shows how a smartphone can be used to capture video of a jump and determine the jump height. A crucial…
Descriptors: Physics, Athletics, Handheld Devices, Mechanics (Physics)
Coqueiro Rodrigues, Rojans; Cardozo Dias, Penha Maria – Physics Teacher, 2022
In high school, and also in introductory physics courses in higher levels of schooling, the law of universal gravitation of planets is introduced by postulating Johannes Kepler's three laws, and later Isaac Newton's law of the inverse of the square of the distance to the Sun. The justification of the laws is only achieved in advanced courses in…
Descriptors: Scientific Principles, Astronomy, Motion, Physics
Greenwood, Margaret Stautberg – Physics Teacher, 2022
From my home on the west bank of the Columbia River in Richland, Washington (46.3°N latitude), I have an unobstructed view of the sunrise along the east bank during an entire year. As a retirement project after a career of teaching and research in physics, I decided to take photographs of the sunrise for a year and, and at the same time, carry out…
Descriptors: Geometry, Light, Physics, Astronomy
Wirth, David C. – Physics Teacher, 2023
In the movie Gravity, American astronaut and scientist Dr. Stone (Sandra Bullock) is on a spacewalk when tragedy suddenly strikes. An ever-increasing field of debris caused by a destroyed spy satellite damages the Hubble and Space Shuttle and quickly wipes out their mission. Dr. Stone spends the rest of the movie trying to find a ride back home.
Descriptors: Physics, Scientific Concepts, Films, Mass Media Use
Hinrichsen, Peter F. – Physics Teacher, 2022
Modern MEMs gyros/accelerometers allow the angular velocity of pendula to be precisely measured and the angular acceleration to be calculated. For a compound pendulum, "I"[subscript p][umlaut over theta]=-"mga" sin[theta]Ip[umlaut over theta]=-mgasin[theta], where "a" is the distance of the center of mass from the…
Descriptors: Motion, Scientific Concepts, Physics, Measurement
Razpet, Nada; Kranjc, Tomaz – Physics Teacher, 2022
In nature, we often observe interesting phenomena for which we would like to find a physical explanation. One such phenomenon is presented in this paper.
Descriptors: Physics, Science Instruction, Environment, Oceanography
Riccardi, Pierfrancesco; Pellegrino, Francesco; Romano, Vittorio – Physics Teacher, 2022
The Physics Teacher has published over the years many inspiring papers with an historical slant and we agree with Thomas B. Greenslade, who recently wrote that teaching physics is about "integrating physics with human culture.… if we are going to leave a lasting impact on our students, we should do more than teach them pure physics."…
Descriptors: Physics, Science Instruction, Science History
Krusberg, Zosia; Coalson, Elam; Feldman, Andrew – Physics Teacher, 2023
One of the objectives of the undergraduate physics curriculum is for students to become aware of the connections between formal physical principles and personal experience. However, research has shown that awareness of connections between the abstract and the experiential tends to deteriorate, sometimes significantly, after instruction in…
Descriptors: Magnets, Undergraduate Students, Physics, Science Education