{"title":"Ebatronics: A New Paradigm for Experimental Laboratory in Applied Science and Technology","authors":"M. Bucolo, A. Buscarino, L. Fortuna, S. Gagliano","doi":"10.1142/s2661339521500165","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1142/s2661339521500165","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, the main concepts and the preliminary results related to a new approach for creating innovative green laboratory experiences in applied science and technology will be discussed. The term ebatronics is here introduced for the first time in the literature to indicate a kind of experimental laboratory based on the conjunction of wooden recycled materials and microcontroller based devices. In particular, tensegrity based systems are presented. A gallery of prototypes developed by the authors is shown. An intense set of photos will illustrate the real effectiveness of the proposed laboratory project.","PeriodicalId":112108,"journal":{"name":"The Physics Educator","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134641239","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Scientific Research: Fun and Excitement for Me … And You!","authors":"J. Thompson","doi":"10.1142/s2661339521300033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1142/s2661339521300033","url":null,"abstract":"This brief article is directed towards young readers, perhaps in their teens, who might be thinking about their future careers and the paths that they might like to follow in later life. I give them for consideration an outline of the fun and excitement that I have myself experienced in scientific research, and encourage them to follow me. To do this, I start by giving some remarks about my own early life and its choices. I then identify some of the decisions and lucky breaks that led to my main scientific work on the theories of stability, nonlinear dynamics and chaos. I point to some new frontiers where knowledge of the physical sciences is spreading into wider areas such as the bio-mechanics of DNA and the prediction of tipping points that could dramatically increase global warming. Finally I give some detailed advice that could be useful as you hopefully enter the thrilling world of scientific research.","PeriodicalId":112108,"journal":{"name":"The Physics Educator","volume":"46 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116004464","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Aspects of Force and Acceleration in Special Relativity","authors":"Peter J. Riggs","doi":"10.1142/s2661339521500141","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1142/s2661339521500141","url":null,"abstract":"In relativistic dynamics, the direction of acceleration is not generally parallel to the direction of force. Both the magnitude and direction of an object’s three-acceleration can alter even when the magnitude of the applied three-force is constant. Graphs of the variation in acceleration and the angles between an object’s velocity, acceleration, and the applied force vectors are presented in order to illustrate the behavior at close to the speed of light.","PeriodicalId":112108,"journal":{"name":"The Physics Educator","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134144000","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Solutions of the Ortvay Rudolf International Competition in Physics: Exploding Refrigerator (2016/10 Problem)","authors":"G. Ákos","doi":"10.1142/s266133952120002x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1142/s266133952120002x","url":null,"abstract":"The Ortvay Rudolf international competition was first organized in 1970. The focus is usually not on routine school-level problems but rather on problem-solving relying on physical reasoning and skills in recognizing the fundamental character and “heart” of the problem. Some problems lead the contestants to so-far unsolved, open questions, while some are accessible to first-year students. However, only for a relatively small number of problems do official solutions exist. The intention of this paper is to be the first in a series of published solutions discussing the competition problems. The problem treated below is a simple exercise about heat transfer in a thermodynamic system, which highlights the limitations and consequences of accepting seemingly intuitive approximations, and gives a didactical example of “explosive” dynamics. The calculation does not use mathematical techniques beyond those commonly expected of high school students.","PeriodicalId":112108,"journal":{"name":"The Physics Educator","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131505827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A New Thought Experiment on Relativistic Length Contraction","authors":"B. Raychaudhuri, S. Ghose, A. Bhadra","doi":"10.1142/S2661339521500128","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1142/S2661339521500128","url":null,"abstract":"Relativistic length contraction is revisited and a simple but new thought experiment is proposed in which an apparent asymmetric situation is developed between two different inertial frames regarding detection of light that comes from a chamber to an adjacent chamber through a movable slit. The proposed experiment does not involve gravity, rigidity or any other dynamical aspect apart from the kinematics of relative motion; neither does it involve any kind of nonuniformity in motion. The resolution of the seemingly paradoxical situation has finally been discussed.","PeriodicalId":112108,"journal":{"name":"The Physics Educator","volume":"50 5","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120906770","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Displacement-Time Graph of a Point on a Wave Pulse","authors":"K. L. Goh","doi":"10.1142/s2661339521200018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1142/s2661339521200018","url":null,"abstract":"Using a linear substitution of distance by velocity and time, it is shown how a displacement-time profile of a particle on a wave pulse is graphed.","PeriodicalId":112108,"journal":{"name":"The Physics Educator","volume":"84 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130488573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Dayrius Tay, Tianyi Fu, Alexander Goo, Bernard Ricardo
{"title":"White Light Communication: A Design for High School Experiment","authors":"Dayrius Tay, Tianyi Fu, Alexander Goo, Bernard Ricardo","doi":"10.1142/s2661339521500104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1142/s2661339521500104","url":null,"abstract":"As wireless communication carrier frequencies continually increase to respond to growing bandwidth demands, from hundreds of MHz (3G/4G) to dozens of GHz (5G), it would only be logical to postulate that the next step in this technological revolution would be to move to hundreds of THz, also known as visible light. This completely alleviates the carrier frequency induced bandwidth limitations while serving as ambient lighting. In this paper, a visible light communication setup capable of moderate bitrate serial communication with interference from ambient lighting will be presented. Furthermore, this paper proposes the implementation of a similar setup as a form of hands-on experiential learning for high school and undergraduate engineering students.","PeriodicalId":112108,"journal":{"name":"The Physics Educator","volume":"22 9","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132974718","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gillian Foo, Jhoon Yong Tan, E. Yuen, L. Arlany, A. Yang, S. Ng, C. Sow, A. H. Chan
{"title":"Demonstrating Gravitational Lensing Using Solar Eclipses","authors":"Gillian Foo, Jhoon Yong Tan, E. Yuen, L. Arlany, A. Yang, S. Ng, C. Sow, A. H. Chan","doi":"10.1142/s2661339521500098","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1142/s2661339521500098","url":null,"abstract":"As encouraged by the interesting paper “Solar eclipses as a teaching opportunity in relativity” by Overduin et al.,awe made measurements of the angular deflections of neighboring stars during the 9 March 2016 total solar eclipse as imaged by National University of Singapore (NUS) students, to verify a result of general relativity. In this project, we used these images and measured the stars’ pixel positions and transformed them to equatorial coordinates using a similar approach to Overduin et al., with a few modifications. Instead of solving to determine the pixel scale and rotation, we performed a plate solution using the software AstroImageJ which enables accounting for the image’s higher order distortion. This data is found in the image’s Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) header. Image star pair separations were then compared to their database separations after determining how the individual deflections affect angular separation. Our experimental results have large uncertainties and were deemed imprecise to confirm the effects of gravitational light deflection. We include a detailed analysis and discussion on this educational project.","PeriodicalId":112108,"journal":{"name":"The Physics Educator","volume":"57 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128269574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Oscillation of a Piston in a Cylinder and Its Approximate Solutions","authors":"Y. Kajiyama","doi":"10.1142/s2661339521500116","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1142/s2661339521500116","url":null,"abstract":"We discuss the oscillation of a piston in a cylinder with various amplitudes in adiabatic processes. When a piston in a cylinder moves due to the pressure of a contained ideal gas, it will oscillate like a harmonic oscillator in the case of small amplitude. However, it is difficult to obtain an analytic solution of the equation of motion because of its nonlinearity in general. In this paper, we find that analytic solutions are expressed by elementary functions under approximations of various amplitudes, which can well describe the motion of the piston. It will help students to understand a nonlinear equation of motion appearing in thermodynamics.","PeriodicalId":112108,"journal":{"name":"The Physics Educator","volume":"50 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114887485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}