The Chain Experiment is an annual competition which originated in Slovenia in 2005 and later expanded to Poland in 2013. For the purpose of the event, each participating team designs and builds a contraption that transports a small steel ball from one end to the other. At the same time the constructed machine needs to use a number of interesting phenomena and physics laws. In the competition’s finale, all contraptions are connected to each other to form a long chain transporting steel balls. In brief, they are all evaluated for qualities such as: creativity and advance in theoretical background, as well as the reliability of the constructed machine to work without human help. In this article, we present the contraptions developed by students taking part in the competition in order to demonstrate the advance in theoretical basis together with creativity in design and outstanding engineering skills of its participants. Furthermore, we situate the Chain Experiment in the context of other group competitions, at the same time demonstrating that—besides activating numerous group work skills—it also improves the ability to think critically and present one’s knowledge to a broader audience. We discussed it in the context of problem based learning, gamification and collaborative testing.

This research focuses on thermal deformations of thermoplast during three-dimensional printing. A filament acrylonitrile butadiene styrene was used, and the main focus was put on warping. Twenty-seven cuboids divided in six categories by their length, height, surface area, color, nozzle temperature and bed temperature were printed by Fused Filament Fabrication 3D printer. The whole process was captured by a thermal camera and the movies were used to analyze the temperature distribution during printing. All printouts were measured and scanned with a 3D scanner in order to highlight any abbreviations from the original digital models. The obtained results were used to formulate some general conclusions on the influence of selected parameters on the warping process. Based on the outcomes of the study, a set of guidelines on how to minimalize warping was proposed.

The aim of this study was to examine the impact of assessing students' achievements in a physics course in the form of a group board game. Research was conducted in two groups of 131 high school students in Poland. In each school, the research sample was divided into experimental and control groups. Each group was taught by the same teacher and participated in the same courses and tests before the game. Just after finishing the course on waves and vibrations (school 1) and optics (school 2), experimental groups took part in a group board game to assess their knowledge. One week after the game, the experimental and control groups (not involved in the game) took part in the post-tests. Students from the experimental groups performed better in the game than in the tests given before the game. As well their results in the post-tests were significantly higher statistically than students from the control groups. Simultaneously, student's opinions in the experimental groups about the board game as an assessment method were collected in an open-descriptive form and in a short questionnaire, and analyzed. Results showed that students experienced a positive attitude toward the assessment method, a reduction of test anxiety and an increase in their motivation for learning.

In studying the dehydration of surface-moistened fumed silica Aerosil powders, we found a conductivity percolation transition at low hydration levels. Both the percolation exponent and the threshold are typical for correlated site-bond transitions in complex two-dimensional (2D) systems. The exponent values, 0.94-1.10, are indicative of severe heterogeneity in the conducting medium. The surface moisture at the percolation threshold takes on a universal value of 0.65 mg([H2O])/m(2)([silica]), independent of the silica grain size, and equivalent to twice the first hydration monolayer. This level is just sufficient to sustain a quasi-2D, hydrogen-bonded water network spanning the silica surface.

This article aims to meet two needs: (i) the need for skilled workers and students in the area of remote sensing and (ii) the need to make school science interesting for students. This article addresses both needs by proposing a project for high school students entitled “the Colors of Earth”. The main aim for students was to distinguish between different types of land cover via the creation of various false color band compositions from the satellite Sentinel-2. Achieving this goal requires knowledge from various subjects and enables their practical application via work performed using real data. The project was presented to 39 high-school teachers and 184 high-school students (K-9 and K-10) in the summer semester of the 2019/2020 school year, and their opinions about the project were collected. Overall, both students and teachers judged the project to be interesting, worth introducing to the school, and capable of influencing student opinions of science. In addition, introducing remote sensing elements during pre-university education can help meet the demands for students and workers to study Earth observation.

Testing knowledge is an integral part of a summative assessment at schools. It can be performed in many different ways. In this study we propose assessment of physics knowledge by using a class tournament approach. Prior to a statistical analysis of the results obtained over a tournament organized in one of Polish high schools, all its specifics are discussed at length, including the types of questions assigned, as well as additional self-and peer-evaluation questionnaires, constituting an integral part of the tournament. The impact of the tournament upon student improvement is examined by confronting the results of a post-test with pre-tournament students' achievements reflected in scores earned in former, tests written by the students in experimental group and their colleagues from control group. We also present some of students' and teachers' feedback on the idea of a tournament as a tool of assessment. Both the analysis of the tournament results and the students' and teachers' opinions point to at least several benefits of our approach.

Heat transfer is a phenomenon well known from everyday life. It is intuitively connected to the properties of materials, that is, to the physics concept of thermal conductivity relevant for cooking or maintaining the constant temperature in rooms, even without being familiar to the underlying physics. However, measurement of thermal conductivity is usually demanding, but here we present a simple, quick, and almost hands-on method that yields quite accurate values for thermal conductivity of insulating and semi-insulating materials, appropriate for a classroom setting.

Cell migration is an important biological phenomenon which depends on a number of internal and external factors. One of such factors can be the mechanical properties of the environment which can have an impact on the cell's regulatory pathways through so-called mechanotransduction. Ultimately, these properties can also influence the process of cell migration. The goal of this work is to investigate how substrate stiffness (elasticity) changes basic migration parameters of migrating cells. Fish keratocytes migrating on polyacrylamide hydrogels have been used as a model of fast migrating cells. Cell migration have been tracked with optical microscopy, employing a time-lapse technique. Migration parameters have been determined from image analysis. This study has shown a systematic decrease of some of the key migration parameters-average cell speed and angular persistence-with a simultaneous increase of substrate elasticity. The results demonstrate that the elasticity of the substrate is the key factor in cell migration. It determines speed and angular persistence, which proves that mechanical parameters of the environment can affect cellular processes. A detailed knowledge of mechanotransduction processes can have major implications for tissue engineering and for the understanding of metastasis.