摘要:

Prepared at the request of the AAPT Editorial Board for Resource Letters. This is one of a series of Resource Letters on different topics intended to guide college physicists, astronomers, and other scientists to some of the literature and other teaching aids that may help improve course contents in specified fields. No Resource Letter is meant to be exhaustive and complete; in time there may be more than one letter on some of the main subjects of interest. Comments on these materials as well as suggestions for future topics will be welcomed. Please send such communications to Professor Aaron Owens, Editor, Resource Letter Board, Department of Physics, Lake Forest College, Lake Forest, IL 60045.Notation: The letter E after an item indicateselementarylevel, useful principally for high school and introductory college use; the letter I indicatesintermediate(junior, senior) level; and the letter A indicatesadvancedmaterial, principally suited for senior, graduate level.Reprints: When ordering, request Resource Letter SE‐1. Enclose 75 cents per copy (not in stamps) together with a stamped, self‐addressed envelope and send to Executive Office, American Association of Physics Teachers, Graduate Physics Building, SUNY at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794.

ISSN:0002-9505    

DOI:10.1119/1.10433

出版商:American Association of Physics Teachers    

年代:1976

数据来源: AIP

摘要:

As the laser is incorporated into more and more systems in our technology, there is a growing need for undergraduate courses detailing the nature of the laser, its uses and limitations. In this paper we report on a junior–senior level course on lasers and their applications, developed jointly by faculty of the Schools of Physics and Electrical Engineering during the past four years. An outline of the course is given and some novel features of the course are discussed. A number of demonstrations that we have found useful are also discussed. Finally, an indication of student response is provided, along with some conclusions of our own.

ISSN:0002-9505    

DOI:10.1119/1.10182

出版商:American Association of Physics Teachers    

年代:1976

数据来源: AIP

摘要:

The scattering of light by spherical drops and the theory of rainbows are reviewed in detail to predict the angular positions of rainbows from single drops. The angular positions of the first 13 rainbows of water, observed from a drop suspended in a student spectrometer, were compared to these theoretical positions. Since the rainbows were dependent on the refractive index, the positions shifted with drops of other fluids having other refractive indices. Light corn syrup yielded 11 rainbows, including the 17th‐order one. The light emerging from the drops was white except for the multicolors of the rainbows and the faint blue of the rays that had been nearly tangentially incident to the drops. With a hand‐held polarized filter, all of the observed rainbows appeared to be polarized parallel to the plane of incidence. Using the 6328‐Å light from a student He–Ne laser, one of the interference patterns composing all natural rainbows was created and photographed. The angular positions of the principal maxima of this pattern differed from the theoretical rainbow positions predicted by geometrical optics by amounts dependent on the drop radius.

ISSN:0002-9505    

DOI:10.1119/1.10172

出版商:American Association of Physics Teachers    

年代:1976

数据来源: AIP

摘要:

A program is described to prepare in‐service elementary school teachers in the subject matter and reasoning skills needed to teach science as a process of inquiry. Included is a procedure for introducing experience‐oriented curricula into the schools. Selected teachers are prepared in a university physics department to serve, under close supervision, as instructors for their colleagues. The program has yielded results with implications for what physics departments should provide for elementary school teachers. Intellectual difficulties encountered by the teachers are discussed that have a bearing not only on successful implementation of school science programs but on physics education in general.

ISSN:0002-9505    

DOI:10.1119/1.10173

出版商:American Association of Physics Teachers    

年代:1976

数据来源: AIP

摘要:

This paper will sketch some answers (incomplete but hopefully suggestive) to these questions: (1) Why observe teaching at all? (2) Why is it so hard to study teaching? (3) What sort of observation of teaching has already been done? (4) What are current directions in research and practice in observation? (5) What might be especially useful for, or appealing to, physicists?

ISSN:0002-9505    

DOI:10.1119/1.10174

出版商:American Association of Physics Teachers    

年代:1976

数据来源: AIP

摘要:

An explicit form of the autocorrelation function of the current densityj(x,t) is derived for a model in which the charge carriers independently undergo Brownian motion, as described by the Langevin equation of an individual carrier. Graphs and a table of this correlation function are given for the case of thermal equilibrium. The case where a steady‐state dc current flows is discussed briefly as well.

ISSN:0002-9505    

DOI:10.1119/1.10175

出版商:American Association of Physics Teachers    

年代:1976

数据来源: AIP

摘要:

An experiment to investigate molecular multiplet structure is described. The phosphorescence spectrum and lifetime from the lowest triplet state of naphthalene is measured by optical spectroscopy, and the zero‐field splitting parameters and the lifetime of paramagnetic resonances of this photoexcited state are determined by electron paramagnetic resonance.

ISSN:0002-9505    

DOI:10.1119/1.10176

出版商:American Association of Physics Teachers    

年代:1976

数据来源: AIP

摘要:

Articles on simple laboratory exercises in statistics have appeared in recent issues of theAmericanJournalofPhysics. This paper describes a similar experiment (but with a somewhat different pedagogic approach) which was introduced three years ago at the very beginning of an undergraduate laboratory course in physics offered at the Vidyodaya Campus of the University of Sri Lanka. An important feature of the exercise to be discussed is that students verify empirically the various aspects of the Gaussian distribution. They obtain a working knowledge of, and a confidence in, some of the commonly used simple statistical procedures, and in particular they are introduced to the sampling technique.

ISSN:0002-9505    

DOI:10.1119/1.10177

出版商:American Association of Physics Teachers    

年代:1976

数据来源: AIP

摘要:

Some early and not easily available history of contact potentials between metals is presented. A discussion is given of how the existence of a characteristic potential difference between metals was established. This discussion presents some idealized experiments and then analyzes the historic work in terms of them. From experiments, it is shown that the measured potential difference lies between two points that are respectively just outside of the two metals in contact. Certain points are brought out that are not often found in the literature. (i) Bennet discovered contact charging of dissimilar metals significantly earlier than Volta did. (ii) Nothing in 19th (or 20th) century physics discloses experimentally the internal potential difference between two dissimilar metals in contact. (iii) Many 19th century physicists, including Maxwell, thought that the Peltier effect disclosed the value of the internal potential difference between dissimilar metals in contact. Later analysis showed that Maxwell was wrong. (iv) The belief that contact potentials were solely electrolytic, arising from damp contacts, recurred well into the 20th century but was almost completely abandoned following the advent of high‐vacuum technology. It recurs occasionally with no justification in the 1940’s and 1950’s.

ISSN:0002-9505    

DOI:10.1119/1.10424

出版商:American Association of Physics Teachers    

年代:1976

数据来源: AIP

ISSN:0002-9505    

DOI:10.1119/1.10178

出版商:American Association of Physics Teachers    

年代:1976

数据来源: AIP