The Physics Educator

Kepler’s laws are an essential part of any mechanics course at the introductory level. They are commonly used to illustrate the power of Newton’s laws at explaining and predicting the motion of planets and comets around the sun. While the derivation of the second and third laws are outlined in every standard textbook, that of the first law (and the shape of orbits in general) is invariably omitted, due mainly to the insufficient proficiency of the targeted students in differential equations. The paper offers a workaround this difficulty. Assuming familiarity with the basic properties of conics and employing Newton’s law of universal gravitation, we manage to obtain, with very little calculus, the classic result: orbits are conic sections whose nature is determined by the body’s total energy.

Heuristic arguments and order of magnitude estimates for partial differential equations highlight essential features of the physics they describe. We present order of magnitude estimates, and their limitations, for the three classic second order PDEs of mathematical physics (wave, heat, and Laplace equations), for first order transport equations, and for two nonlinear wave equations. It is beneficial to expose the beginning student to these considerations before jumping into more rigorous mathematics. Yet these simple arguments are missing from physics textbooks.

This paper presents the theoretical bases and numerical simulation of the persistent luminescence applied to radiation dosimetry to create an educational exercise for undergraduate students who are beginning in the areas of physics and radiation dosimetry. Numerical simulation of persistent luminescence curves was performed using Mathcad v15 software. Persistent luminescence curves with first-order kinetics were simulated, and their relationship with the thermoluminescence phenomenon was also studied. In addition, this paper explains a series of numerical simulations that include various types of experiments that can be carried out to characterize materials that are constituted by a persistent luminescence property, for instance, dose-response, reusability, selection of measurement temperature, determination of lifetime $\tau$, energy activation E, and frequency factor s.

The use of computers as a learning tool has been a time-tested method, which can attract the interest and motivation of students to solve any complicated system easily. Scilab is an open-source computational software package that provides various tools to simulate and solve problems in classical mechanics.

In this paper, two types of classical mechanics problems are solved. Under kinematics section, we solve the Projectile motion considering air resistance and particle falling under the action of gravity, with resistive force dependence on different exponents of velocity. Similarly, under the waves superposition section, we solve the two sinusoidal waves superimposed to give a Lissajous pattern and superposition of two or more waves using Scilab software for a better understanding of the classical problems by visualization of graphs, as Scilab has 2D and 3D plotting facilities.

Undergraduate students in upper levels of physics or engineering programs learn the theory of Fourier series and integral transform method from mathematics courses. Nevertheless, they rarely see the application of such a method to solving problems in calculus-based physics courses that deal with topics such as electrostatics or magnetism. In this work, we illustrate the utility of the Fourier transform method by considering and solving via such a technique a representative problem that arises in electrostatics. The chosen case study is that of a spherical surface with uniform surface charge density and the calculation of its electrostatic Coulomb self-energy. By solving this problem by using the Fourier transform technique we also draw attention to the pedagogical aspects of the treatment. In particular, we stress the point that the Fourier transform method should be treated at more depth in calculus-based physics courses for undergraduate students.

Investments in physics education suffer from rather poor outcomes if we consider the high percentage of young people for whom physics is not perceived as a rich opportunity but only as an arid obstacle along their educational path. To make physics teaching more inclusive also with respect to these students, physics teachers should act as interpreters who combine and convey the powerful images and mental schemes typical of physics together with multiple cultural contexts. Only from this perspective, physics may finally represent an effective contribution to the growth and development of all, especially those who do not plan to become scientists. Systematic references to the humanities may offer a didactic approach that has been underestimated and little exploited until now.