Contemporary discipline-based physics education research can trace its roots to the post-Sputnik era beginning in the late 1950s. The task of mapping out the history of a recent and growing field spanned by diverse agendae will undoubtedly be colored by one’s own experiences and interests. Therefore, our description of the foundations and frontiers of the field presented in this paper is a pers...

physics education is the nearly complete absence of continuum mechanics in the typical undergraduate or graduate curriculum. Continuum mechanics refers to field descriptions of mechanical phenomena, which are usually modeled by partial differential equations. The Navier–Stokes equations for the velocity and pressure fields of Newtonian fluids provide an important example, but continuum modeling...

Student difficulties in science learning are frequently attributed tomisconceptions about scientific concepts. We argue that domain-general perceptual processes may also influence students’ ability to learn and demonstrate mastery of difficult science concepts. Using the concept of center of gravity (CoG), we show how student difficulty in applying CoG to an object such as a baseball bat can be...

We discuss the use of World Wide Web-based Java simulations in teaching physics to K{12 and undergraduate students. Our work focuses on the physics of membranes and illustrating how such systems are studied. We propose that Java should be used not only to produce small versions of research simulations but also to provide models illustrating simpler concepts underlying the main subject matter. I...