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Reasoning consistently across contexts is a challenge in learning physics. Even students who demonstrate correct conceptual understanding and reasoning on one task often fail to use the same knowledge and skills on related tasks. Observed inconsistencies can be accounted for by dual-process theories, which assert that human cognition involves two thinking processes: the heuristic, which is fast and automatic, and the analytic, which is slow and deliberate. Inconsistent responses arise when the heuristic process produces an intuitively appealing (but incorrect) response that the analytic process fails to reject. We speculated that instruction that makes the dual nature of human cognition explicit and more visible to the students could help them recognize and evaluate intuitive responses more productively. We will present results of a study designed to probe the impact of such instruction on student learning in introductory calculus-based mechanics courses.

AAPT SM 21

Making dual nature of human reasoning more explicit during instruction*

evidence based practices

dual process theory

student reasoning

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technical paper

The Classical Mechanics course taught at BC in Fall 2020 used a hybrid of model of class instruction, combining students learning remotely and students attending in person into a single synchronous class. Past offerings of this course used hands-on lab experiments to engage students in mathematical modeling of oscillators and other mechanics topics. To give all the learners a uniform experience, lab experiments in 2020 were replaced with group video analysis projects, integrating lecture, experiment, and computation. The videos were used to scaffold increasingly nuanced computational models. For example, for oscillations, student videos of everyday objects oscillating were solicited and exploited as a “hook” to introduce modeling of undamped springs, and the discrepancies between theory and experiment were used to motivate damped models. This structure was inspired by Brian Lane’s “Capture, Code, Compare” activities.

Labs in Intermediate Mechanics: Combining Student-Made Videos with Computational Modeling

This talk provides an introduction to the mission, features, and types of articles in the American Journal of Physics with a goal of helping potential authors understand how to prepare a submission.

Publishing in the American Journal of Physics

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Using Japanese Animation (Anime) for Teaching Fluid Mechanics

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Surface Charges from a Sensing Pixel Perspective

Looking back, it has been a year like no other for The Physics Teacher. I will shine a spotlight on some of our recent content such as the exciting collection of articles on sex, gender and physics teaching, while also reflecting on some of the metrics we use to measure what we produce. In addition I will attempt to convey some glimpses of possible future feature items in TPT.

TPT Highlights from a Challenging Year

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The Elephant in the (Class)Room: Discussing Gender Inequality in Physics

The Physics Teacher focuses on teaching introductory physics at the high school, two- and four-year college, and university levels. Typical topics include innovative physics demonstrations, new ways of doing lab experiments, ideas for presenting difficult concepts more clearly, suggestions for implementing newer technology into teaching, historical insights that enrich the physics course, and suggestions for using results from physics education research, all focused on teachers in the introductory physics classroom. I’ll discuss our newest process for submitting manuscripts and what to expect after you submit your work.


Submitting a manuscript to The Physics Teacher

The biological cell exhibits a fantastic range of behaviors, but ultimately these are governed by a handful of physical and chemical principles. Here we explore simple theory, known for decades and based on the simple thermodynamics of mixtures of ideal gases, which illuminates several key functions performed within the cell. Our focus is the free-energy-driven import and export of molecules, such as nutrients and other vital compounds, via transporter proteins. Complementary to a thermodynamic picture is a description of transporters via "mass-action" chemical kinetics, which lends further insights into biological machinery and free energy use. Both thermodynamic and kinetic descriptions can shed light on the fundamental non-equilibrium aspects of transport. Our biochemical-physics discussion will remain agnostic to chemical details.

Key biology you should have learned in physics class

The conceptual development of student understanding of weight
Xiangqun Zhang and Lei Bao
Existing research has reported persistent difficulties among students at all levels in understanding the concepts involving weight and gravitation. In the literature and textbooks, there are two versions of weight definition in terms of (1) the gravitational force applied on an object and (2) the force applied on the supporting object. The latter is often referred to as the operational definition of weight, which describes the process of weighing an object. Studies have also demonstrated that using the operational definition in teaching can improve student understanding of the concepts involving weight, gravitation, and weighing. However, in the Chinese middle school physics curriculum, the gravitational definition of weight is mandated and universally implemented in instruction. To investigate the impact on student learning from using the gravitational definition of weight, a post-instruction survey is conducted to examine students’ conceptual understandings of weight. The results will be discussed and compared to the literature.


The conceptual development of student understanding of weight

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