The 'ball on a string' demonstration is a common tool used in physics education to illustrate the concept of conservation of angular momentum. However, various confounding factors can cause significant deviations from the idealized case, particularly under extreme conditions or when using low-stiffness pivots or high coefficients of friction. These factors include air resistance, contact friction at the pivot point, the mass of the ball and string, the angle of the string due to gravity, and the wobbling of the pivot point due to the centrifugal forces acting on it. In this work, we critically review by means of accurate simulations the adequateness of the 'ball on a string' demonstration in view of these confounding factors and provide recommendations for instructors on how to maximize the educational value of the demonstration while minimizing potential confusion for students. Our analysis suggests that a stiff pivot and avoiding extreme conditions are key to obtaining results that are in good agreement with the idealized case. We also caution instructors against using the demonstration without at least mentioning the confounding factors, as this may lead to a questionable understanding of the underlying physics principles.

In this paper, we present two different experiments aimed at supporting the understanding of surface phenomena at undergraduate level. In the first experiment, we measure the surface tension of several common liquids like water, oil, alcohol, etc by using a simplified custom-built Du Nouy ring apparatus. In the second experiment, the contact angle at the water-glass-air interface is estimated by means of two glass slides that form a sort of variable-size capillary. Materials and experimental apparatuses require a low budget, but the results agree very well with those reported in the literature, obtained with much more sophisticated and expensive equipment. This makes the experiments presented here suitable for educational paths aimed at understanding surface phenomena at undergraduate and even at high school level.

Language is an important resource for physicists and learners of physics to construe physical phenomena and processes, and communicate ideas. Moreover, any physics-related instructional setting is inherently language-bound, and physics literacy is fundamentally related to comprehending and producing both physics-specific and general language. Consequently, characterizing physics language and understanding language use in physics are important goals for research on physics learning and instructional design. Qualitative physics education research offers a variety of insights into the characteristics of language and language use in physics such as the differences between everyday language and scientific language, or metaphors used to convey concepts. However, qualitative language analysis fails to capture distributional (i.e. quantitative) aspects of language use and is resource-intensive to apply in practice. Integrating quantitative and qualitative language analysis in physics education research might be enhanced by recently advanced artificial intelligence-based technologies such as large language models, as these models were found to be capable to systematically process and analyse language data. Large language models offer new potentials in some language-related tasks in physics education research and instruction, yet they are constrained in various ways. In this scoping review, we seek to demonstrate the multifaceted nature of language and language use in physics and answer the question what potentials and limitations artificial intelligence-based methods such as large language models can have in physics education research and instruction on language and language use.

The paper aims to fulfil three main functions: (1) to serve as an introduction for the physics education community to the functioning of large language models (LLMs), (2) to present a series of illustrative examples demonstrating how prompt-engineering techniques can impact LLMs performance on conceptual physics tasks and (3) to discuss potential implications of the understanding of LLMs and prompt engineering for physics teaching and learning. We first summarise existing research on the performance of a popular LLM-based chatbot (ChatGPT) on physics tasks. We then give a basic account of how LLMs work, illustrate essential features of their functioning, and discuss their strengths and limitations. Equipped with this knowledge, we discuss some challenges with generating useful output with ChatGPT-4 in the context of introductory physics, paying special attention to conceptual questions and problems. We then provide a condensed overview of relevant literature on prompt engineering and demonstrate through illustrative examples how selected prompt-engineering techniques can be employed to improve ChatGPT-4's output on conceptual introductory physics problems. Qualitatively studying these examples provides additional insights into ChatGPT's functioning and its utility in physics problem-solving. Finally, we consider how insights from the paper can inform the use of LLMs in the teaching and learning of physics.

The recent proposition to eliminate eponyms from physical publications is discussed. The role of eponyms in research and education is analyzed. We show that eponyms constitute an integral part of physical texts and ensure the continuity of scientific research. Their proposed elimination is dangerous for science and the entire human culture and must be rejected.

In this research, we investigated the impact of peer collaboration and changes from individual to group performance of graduate students on the conceptual survey of electricity and magnetism (CSEM) without any guidance from the instructor. We define construction of knowledge as a case in which the group answered the question correctly but in the individual administration of the survey before the group work, one member gave the correct answer and the other gave incorrect answer. We find that there was a significant improvement in the performance of students after peer interaction, which was mostly attributed to construction of knowledge. However, students had very few opportunities to co-construct knowledge as there were hardly any situations in which neither student in a group provided a correct answer. We analyzed the effect size for improvement from individual to group scores for each CSEM item to understand the characteristics of these questions that led to productive group interaction. We also compared the group performance of the graduate students to the introductory physics students in a prior study using the CSEM to get insight into the concepts that showed differences for the two groups and those that were challenging for both groups of students before and after collaboration with peers. Our findings can motivate physics instructors to incorporate group interactions both inside and outside of the classroom even without instructor's involvement so that students at all levels can learn from each other and develop a functional understanding of the underlying concepts.

Research suggests that interacting with more peers about physics course material is correlated with higher student performance. Some studies, however, have demonstrated that different topics of peer interactions may correlate with their performance in different ways, or possibly not at all. In this study, we probe both the peers with whom students interact about their physics course and the particular aspects of the course material about which they interacted in six different introductory physics courses: four lecture courses and two lab courses. Drawing on social network analysis methods, we replicate prior work demonstrating that, on average, students who interact with more peers in their physics courses have higher final course grades. Expanding on this result, we find that students discuss a wide range of aspects of course material with their peers: concepts, small-group work, assessments, lecture, and homework. We observe that in the lecture courses, interacting with peers about concepts is most strongly correlated with final course grade, with smaller correlations also arising for small-group work and homework. In the lab courses, on the other hand, small-group work is the only interaction topic that significantly correlates with final course grade. We use these findings to discuss how course structures (e.g. grading schemes and weekly course schedules) may shape student interactions and add nuance to prior work by identifying how specific types of student interactions are associated (or not) with performance.

On the Internet, Quantum Mechanics is an area of physics that is shrouded in misinterpretations. In this scenario, scientific outreach may serve as an instrument for disseminating scientific knowledge. Especially in this context, it is important that people's learning encompasses more than the meanings of concepts and laws, involving aspects related to the 'why' and 'for what purpose' the knowledge was and is constructed. We consider these aspects as components of the sense, the connotative and subjective dimension of conceptual learning which encompasses a positioning of an individual towards a concept and its relevance in the physics framework. Motivated by this, in the present study, we investigated the senses ascribed to the concept of wave–particle duality (WPD) by 121 participants in a two-day (five-hour) science outreach minicourse in the double-slit experiment. Drawing on the ideas of Franco et al (2023, Cadernos de Pesquisa do Programa de PÓs-graduaÇão em Ensino de Física da UFRGS (Research Notebooks from the Postgraduate Program in Physics Teaching at UFRGS), Pimenta Cultural Editors S/A), we posit sensemaking as a type of cognitive effort to overcome a situation, viewed as a self-regulatory phenomenon wherein individuals self-observe, self-evaluate, and self-react to the situation to achieve a certain goal. In addition to identifying the senses attributed to the concept of WPD, we assessed the relationships between these senses and participants' performance in a standardized test of this concept, as well as their educational background and field of study. Data were collected using questionnaires answered before and at the end of the course. The senses ascribed to the concept of WPD were investigated through similarity and cluster analysis based on responses to essay questions. The relationships among these senses, questionnaire performance, and educational background were evaluated using non-parametric statistical tests. We infer two senses attributed to wave–particle duality: (1) WPD is a basic and fundamental concept that impacts the way we comprehend the essence of nature, and (2) WPD is a very advanced concept restricted to the field of Quantum Mechanics. A statistically significant correlation (0.26 was identified between the senses attributed and participants' performance on the standardized test, suggesting that the sense ascribed to a concept and performance in questions requiring its mobilization are overlapping elements but constitute two distinct dimensions of learning that need to be assessed simultaneously.

The ongoing second quantum revolution and the growing impact of quantum technologies on our society and economy are making quantum physics education even more important. Consequently, there is a lot of research on quantum physics education for university students and even the general public. However, studying quantum physics or any other topic is primarily voluntary and thus a matter of personal interest�Xand it can only grow from a seed planted earlier. Here, we describe and test how a one-day event designed to trigger interest and change perceptions about quantum physics among physics and mathematics students at the University of Turku, Finland succeeded in meeting its goals. The data was collected from participants through questionnaires and complementary interviews. We found that the event made attitudes and views toward quantum physics more positive, versatile, and realistic. Although the event was too short to notably or permanently elevate the phase of interest when evaluated externally on a four-level scale, self-evaluations still reported an increased interest for most participants. Thus, it appears that even a short event can cultivate the ground to make it fertile for maintaining and developing interest further, for example, by well-designed and -timed quantum physics curriculum.