Teaching Einsteinian physics at schools: part 1, models and analogies for relativity

Kaur, Tejinder; Blair, David; Moschilla, John; Stannard, Warren; Zadnik, Marjan

doi:10.1088/1361-6552/aa83e4

Cited by 48 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…The focus of this research is completely different in that the gender outcomes were not derived from a deliberate strategy. The 'Einstein-First' project set out to investigate the possibility of introducing Einsteinian physics (a combination of special, and general relativity and quantum physics) as foundational concepts in school education [28]. The historical and useful Newtonian approximations are introduced later.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender response to Einsteinian physics interventions in school

Kaur¹,

Blair²,

Choudhary³

et al. 2020

Phys. Educ.

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There is growing interest in the introduction of Einsteinian concepts of space, time, light and gravity across the entire school curriculum. We have developed an educational programme named 'Einstein-First', which focuses on teaching Einsteinian concepts by using simple models and analogies. To test the effectiveness of these models and analogies in terms of student attitudes to physics and ability to understand the concepts, various short and long interventions were conducted. These interventions were run with Years 6 to 10 academically talented and average IQ students. In all cases, we observe significant levels of conceptual understanding and improvement in student attitudes, although the magnitude of the improvement depends on age group and programme duration. This paper reports an unexpected outcome in regard to gender effects. We have compared male and female outcomes. In most cases, independent of age group, academic stream and culture (including one intervention in Indonesia), we find that female students enter our programmes with substantially lower attitude scores than males, while upon the completion of the programme, their attitudes are comparable to the boys. This provides a compelling case for widespread implementation of Einsteinian conceptual learning across the school curriculum. We discuss possible reasons for this effect.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender response to Einsteinian physics interventions in school

Kaur¹,

Blair²,

Choudhary³

et al. 2020

Phys. Educ.

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“…The aconitase assay was performed by mixing 100 µg of cell lysate with 200 µl of 1x aconitase assay buffer (0.6 mM MnCl2, 25 mM sodium citrate, 0.25 mm ADP, 50 mM Tris-HCl, pH 7.6). The absorbance was recorded at 340 nm, and the specific aconitase activity was calculated per milligram of total proteins (Kaur et al, 2017).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Polyphosphate FunctionsIn Vivoas Iron Chelator and Fenton Inhibitor

Beaufay¹,

Quarles²,

Franz³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Maintaining cellular iron homeostasis is critical for organismal survival. Whereas iron depletion negatively affects the many metabolic pathways that depend on the activity of iron-containing enzymes, any excess of iron can cause the rapid formation of highly toxic reactive oxygen species (ROS) through Fenton chemistry. Although several cellular iron chelators have been identified, little is known about if and how organisms can prevent the Fenton reaction. By studying the effects of cisplatin, a commonly used anticancer drug and effective antimicrobial, we discovered that cisplatin elicits severe iron stress and oxidative DNA damage in bacteria. We found that both of these effects are successfully prevented by polyphosphate (polyP), an abundant polymer consisting solely of covalently linked inorganic phosphates.Subsequent in vitro and in vivo studies revealed that polyP provides a crucial iron reservoir under nonstress conditions, and effectively complexes free iron and blocks ROS formation during iron stress.These results demonstrate that polyP, a universally conserved biomolecule, plays a hitherto unrecognized role as an iron chelator and an inhibitor of the Fenton reaction.

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“…Moreover, recent works on teaching relativity to preuniversity students focus usually on special as opposed to general relativity [8][9][10] or contribute to an important broader discussion on interpretations of GR [51] without suggesting actual learning goals that could guide the development of learning resources. Most of the publications that investigate learners' perspectives on GR study undergraduate instead of upper secondary students [11][12][13], an exception being Pitts et al [1] and Kaur et al [52] from the EinsteinFirst project [53]. The Einstein-First project aims to change the paradigm of school science teaching through the introduction of modern Einsteinian concepts of space and time, gravity and quanta at an early age.…”

Section: B Mer-component 2: Student Perspectives On General Relativimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…before by education researchers and physicists [2,53,54,65]. Even though GR relies on an advanced mathematical foundation, the theory is geometric in its nature.…”

Section: -11mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This analogy compares spacetime to a rubber sheet that gets distorted by massive objects. It is a popular, yet controversial way of illustrating GR [2,53,67]. We found that even though most students showed awareness of the limitations of an analogy that reduces the number of dimensions, many did not address the temporal dimension of spacetime explicitly [66].…”

Section: -11mentioning

confidence: 99%

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General relativity in upper secondary school: Design and evaluation of an online learning environment using the model of educational reconstruction

Kersting

Henriksen

Bøe

et al. 2018

Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res.

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Because of its abstract nature, Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity is rarely present in school physics curricula. Although the educational community has started to investigate ways of bringing general relativity to classrooms, field-tested educational material is rare. Employing the model of educational reconstruction, we present a collaborative online learning environment that was introduced to final year students (18-19 years old) in six Norwegian upper secondary physics classrooms. Design-based research methods guided the development of the learning resources, which were based on a sociocultural view of learning and a historical-philosophical approach to teaching general relativity. To characterize students' learning from and interaction with the learning environment we analyzed focus group interviews and students' oral and written responses to assigned problems and discussion tasks. Our findings show how design choices on different levels can support or hinder understanding of general relativity, leading to the formulation of design principles that help to foster qualitative understanding and encourage collaborative learning. The results indicate that upper secondary students can obtain a qualitative understanding of general relativity when provided with appropriately designed learning resources and sufficient scaffolding of learning through interaction with teacher and peers.

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Teaching Einsteinian physics at schools: part 1, models and analogies for relativity

Cited by 48 publications

References 29 publications

Gender response to Einsteinian physics interventions in school

Gender response to Einsteinian physics interventions in school

Polyphosphate FunctionsIn Vivoas Iron Chelator and Fenton Inhibitor

General relativity in upper secondary school: Design and evaluation of an online learning environment using the model of educational reconstruction

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