Physics education Definition and 11 Discussions

Physics education refers to the methods currently used to teach physics. Physics Education Research refers to an area of pedagogical research that seeks to improve those methods. Historically, physics has been taught at the high school and college level primarily by the lecture method together with laboratory exercises aimed at verifying concepts taught in the lectures. These concepts are better understood when lectures are accompanied with demonstration, hand-on experiments, and questions that require students to ponder what will happen in an experiment and why. Students who participate in active learning for example with hands-on experiments learn through self-discovery. By trial and error they learn to change their preconceptions about phenomena in physics and discover the underlying concepts.

View More On Wikipedia.org
Recent contents
  1. M

    Admissions Want to continue my Formal Education

    Hi everyone, I was a high school student back in 2010 and then I got problems in life where my studies were left behind. I do a lot of self study. But now I want to continue, do a Bs graduation degree but I don't know if any college in world allows a online physics degree. I searched for Arizona...
  2. A

    Advice on studying physics

    I am afraid this post doesn't belong to this forum. But, I can't think of any other place better than this to post it. I am an 2nd year physics undergraduate. In high school, I loved physics and spent some time with it. However, I didn't get into any of my preferred universities and for that I...
  3. W

    The coming revolution in physics education

    Classical physics is difficult because it is based on differential equations, and the differential equations of interest are usually unsolvable. The student must invest a lot of time in learning difficult math, and still can only analyze very simple systems. This difficulty arises in the first...
  4. J

    Schools What’s after Physics C?

    What courses in a physics major’s curriculum usually come after introductory calculus based mechanics and E&M?
  5. M

    Studying How to be the best physicist you can be

    Hi All! A question that has been on my mind lately is how can a person be the best physicist that they can possibly be. Obviously 'best' is open to interpretation, so let's just say "How can a person make the largest impact on some field in physics that they are capable of". If we had to pick...
  6. robphy

    AAPT 2017 Summer Meeting-Cincinnati, OH (Jul 22-26, 2017)

    The AAPT Winter Meeting in Atlanta ( https://www.aapt.org/Conferences/wm2017/ ) is going on now. Unfortunately, this meeting was scheduled for now [in the middle of the semester], rather than its usual time in January [during my break]. So, I wasn't able to make it. However, the website for the...
  7. Salma Salem

    Programs Masters in Physics for undecided Specialization

    Hello all, I'm currently an undergraduate Physics major in an Egyptian University, I was intending to pursue a masters in Physics in a university abroad (Europe or US) and I have not yet decided what do I want to specialize in, I wanted to ask for suggestions for Master's programs which involve...
  8. C

    Male Bio Students Underestimate Female Peers

    I noticed this article today on Science Daily and it got me wondering whether the same phenomenon (or perhaps something even stronger) is found in physics. In summary, the findings were that male students showed a bias towards believing that male students out-performed female students, but the...
  9. T

    What are some good pedagogical QM papers?

    I did a search but couldn't find what I was looking for. I'm a physics student studying QM at the graduate level. I'm aware that "nobody truly understands QM" but I'd like to get as much insight and intuition as possible. Textbooks are good for learning to solve problems and learning the...
    • TomServo
    • Thread
    • papers physics education publications quantum mechanics
    • Replies: 6
    • Forum: Quantum Physics
  10. J

    De Broglie all the way down

    This is going to seem like it should be an educational question, and perhaps it should, but please bear with me, because I think that it has theoretical content. A nice quote that I recently heard someplace went something like: "We used to argue about whether electrons [etc] were particles or...
  11. L

    Physics How to begin a career change to physics?

    I'm a 38-year-old lawyer who left my law practice in NYC a few months ago to stay home with my toddler. I am also expecting a second child. I have a deep regret that I did not study physics, astronomy, and mathematics in university. I started as a math major and completed almost enough...
Top