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Researchers at universities in Frankfurt and Tübingen have developed and empirically evaluated a new teaching concept for teaching secondary physics.
The topic of electricity often poses
difficulties for many secondary school students in physics lessons. Physics
Education Researchers at the Goethe University and the University of Tübingen
have developed and empirically evaluated a new, intuitive curriculum as part of
a major comparative study. The result: not only do secondary school students
gain a better conceptual understanding of electric circuits, but teachers also perceive
the curriculum as a significant improvement in their teaching.
FRANKFURT /
TÜBINGEN. Life without electricity is something that is no longer imaginable.
Whether it be a smartphone, hair-dryer or a ceiling lamp – the technical
accomplishments we hold dear all require electricity.
Although every child at school learns that electricity can only flow in a
closed electric circuit, what is actually the difference between current and
voltage? Why is a plug socket a potential death-trap but a simple battery is
not? And why does a lamp connected to a power strip not become dimmer when a
second lamp is plugged in?
Research into physics education has
revealed that even after the tenth grade many secondary school students are not
capable of answering such fundamental questions about simple electric circuits
despite their teachers' best efforts. Against this backdrop, Jan-Philipp Burde,
who recently became a junior professor at the University of Tübingen, in the
framework of his doctoral thesis supervised by Prof. Thomas Wilhelm at Goethe University,
developed an innovative curriculum for simple electric circuits, which
specifically builds upon the everyday experiences of the students. In contrast
to the approaches taken to date, from the very outset the new curriculum aims
to help students develop an intuitive understanding of voltage. In analogy to air
pressure differences that cause an air stream (e.g. at an inflated air
mattress), voltage is introduced as an “electric pressure difference" that causes
an electric current. A comparative study with 790 school pupils at secondary
schools in Frankfurt showed that the new curriculum led to a significantly
improved understanding of electric circuits compared to traditional physics
tuition. Moreover, the participating teachers also stated that using the new
curriculum fundamentally improved their teaching.
The two researchers from Frankfurt and
Tübingen have now published a detailed description of the theoretical
considerations underlying the teaching concept in the renowned international
journal “Physical Review Physics Education Research"
in the framework of the “Focused Collection: Theory into Design". The German
Society for Chemistry and Physics Education (GDCP) awarded its
“GDCP-Nachwuchspreis", a prize presented each year for the best dissertation or
post-doctoral thesis in chemistry and physics education in the German-speaking
region, to Burde for his dissertation. As of the winter semester 2019/20 Burde
was appointed to a junior professorship for Physics Education Research supported
by the Vector Foundation at the University of
Tübingen. On the basis of his work a cross-border consortium encompassing the Universities
Tübingen, Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Dresden, Graz and Vienna has been constituted
with the objective of making the subject of “simple electric circuits" more
interesting and more comprehensible by embedding the topic in contexts from daily
life.
Publications:
Jan-Philipp Burde
and Thomas Wilhelm (2020). Teaching electric circuits with a focus on
potential differences. In: Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 16,
020153, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.16.020153
Jan-Philipp Burde (2018): Konzeption
und Evaluation eines Unterrichtskonzepts zu einfachen Stromkreisen auf Basis
des Elektronengasmodells. Studien zum Physik- und Chemielernen, Band 259,
Logos-Verlag, Berlin, ISBN: 978-3-8325-4726-4, http://doi.org/10.30819/4726
Picture
download:
http://www.uni-frankfurt.de/95652319
Caption:
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Jan-Philipp Burde, University of Tübingen. Photo: Friedhelm
Albrecht for University of Tübingen
http://www.uni-frankfurt.de/95652342
Caption:
Prof. Dr. Thomas Wilhelm, Goethe University
Frankfurt. Photo: Felix Richter
Further
Information:
Prof. Dr. Thomas Wilhelm
Executive Director
Department of Physics Education Research
Goethe University Frankfurt
Phone: +49 69 798-47845
wilhelm@physik.uni-frankfurt.de
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Jan-Philipp Burde
Physics Education Research Group
University of Tübingen
Phone: +49 7071 29 78651
jan-philipp.burde@uni-tuebingen.de
The Indian writer will talk in the lecture series In Transit|ion.
On 22 January, the Indian writer Arundhati Roy will be the featured guest speaker in the renowned "In Transit|ion" lecture series at Goethe University Frankfurt. The series is an international and transdisciplinary programme offered by the Institute of English and American Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt. In the Zoom event:
"The syntax of everyday injustice" on 22.01.2021
10:00h - 12:00h CET (Central European Time)
14:30h - 16:30h IST (India Standard Time)
Roy will read from her new work, forms the
basis for the subsequent discussion, moderated by Dr. Pavan Malreddy,
research associate at the Institute of English and American Studies. The event
will be held in English.
Arundhati Roy is the author of the award-winning bestseller "The God of Small Things," published in 1997, in which she writes of the connections between the caste system, class society, capitalism and imperialism. In the years between the publication of her first and second critically acclaimed novel, which appeared two decades later, she mainly wrote literary and political essays and confronted Indian society on a variety of topics: religious persecution, economic inequalities, caste and class hierarchies, the exploitation of natural resources and the resulting expropriation of small farmers in the name of development.
Her extensive non-fiction work including "The Politics of Power," and "From the Workshop of Democracy," and her second novel "The Ministry of Extreme Happiness" explain how capitalism and privatisation undermine democracy, destroy the environment and irreversibly accelerate climate change. Both her novels and her non-fiction work are the subject of lively, sometimes heated, scientific debates both inside and outside India. Her works are read today in more than forty languages.
Roy is an outspoken critic of communalism and majoritarianism in Indian
politics. Her concise analysis of grassroots fascism and the ideological
breeding ground it needs to flourish in Indian society and elsewhere forms the
basis of her most recent work "Azadi - Freedom, Fascism, Fiction" (2020).
The lecture series
"In Transit|ion - Frankfurt Lectures in Literary and Cultural
Studies" is an international and transdisciplinary series organised by
the Institute of English and American Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt.
Twice a semester, leading writers and scholars from the English-speaking world
present their work in the fields of American Studies, English Studies and
Anglophone Literatures and Cultures. Since its inception in 2016, the series
has featured speakers from top international universities in Great Britain
(Oxford, Cambridge), the U.S. (Columbia, Chicago), Australia (Monash
University) and India (North Bengal).
Please register for the event
by e-mail: pavanmalreddy@protonmail.com
Further information:
Dr. Pavan Malreddy, New English Literatures and Cultures (NELK) &
Frankfurt Memory Studies Platform (FMSP)
Goethe University Frankfurt am
Main.
malreddy@em.uni-frankfurt.de; https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/72041247/In_Transition
Research team from Goethe University and TU Munich involved
Extremely dense neutron
stars may contain unstable hyperons in their interior, which, like the stable
hadrons of the atomic nucleus, protons and neutrons, are held together by the strong
interaction. Scientists from the ALICE collaboration at the accelerator centre
CERN have now developed a method to precisely measure the strong interaction
between unstable hadrons in experiments for the first time. Research teams from
Goethe University headed by Professor Harald Appelshäuser and TU Munich headed by Professor Laura
Fabbietti were involved in the development.
FRANKFURT. In an article published
today in Nature, the ALICE collaboration describes a novel method that will
allow precision measurements of the strong interaction between hadrons at the
Large Hadron Collider (LHC) accelerator at CERN in Geneva.
Hadrons - which include
protons and neutrons - are particles composed of two or three quarks, which are
held together by the strong interaction. However, the interaction is not
limited to the interior of the hadron, but extends beyond it. It leads to something
known as residual interaction, due to which hadrons also exert forces on each
other. The best-known example is the force between protons and neutrons, which
is responsible for the cohesion of atomic nuclei. One of the great challenges
of modern nuclear physics is to achieve an accurate calculation of the strong
force between hadrons, which is based on the underlying strong interaction of
quarks.
Within the framework of something
known as "lattice QCD" calculations, the effective strong force
between hadrons can be calculated on the basis of the fundamental theory of the
strong interaction between quarks. However, these calculations are only very
accurate for hadrons containing heavy quarks. This applies, for example, to
hyperons, i.e. hadrons that contain one or more strange quarks. Although the
strong interaction caused by collisions of hadrons can be studied in scattering
experiments, it is difficult to perform these experiments with unstable hadrons
such as hyperons. Accordingly, an experimental comparison with the precise
theoretical predictions from the lattice QCD for hyperons is difficult.
In today's publication
of the ALICE collaboration a method is presented which allows the study of the
dynamics of the strong interaction for arbitrary pairs of hadrons. This
concerns especially those hadrons which are short-lived, i.e. which decay after
fractions of seconds and therefore cannot be investigated in scattering
experiments. Instead, the hadrons are generated in proton-proton collisions at
the LHC. The interaction between them can be measured on the basis of their
relative momentum distribution.
Professor Laura Fabbietti
from the TU Munich, who has contributed significantly to the results presented
here, emphasises that this breakthrough is due to both the LHC and the ALICE
detector. The LHC is able to generate a very large number of hadrons with
strange quarks and thus provides an insight into the nature of the strong
interaction. The ALICE detector and its high-resolution Time Projection Chamber
(TPC), in turn, would provide the necessary precision to identify the particles
accurately and measure their momentum accurately.
Harald Appelshäuser,
professor at Goethe University, has been leading the ALICE TPC project for
ten years and is co-author of the publication. He works closely with Laura
Fabbietti's Munich group and emphasises that the method presented would usher
in "a new era of precision studies of the strong interaction between exotic
hadrons at the LHC."
The method presented is
called femtoscopy because the processes examined take place in a spatial area
of about 1 femtometre (10-15metres). This corresponds approximately to the size of a
hadron and the range of the strong interaction. Using this method, the ALICE
collaboration has already been able to study interactions between hyperons
containing one or two strange quarks. In today's publication, a measurement of
the interaction between a proton and the omega (Ω) hyperon has now been
investigated for the first time and with high precision. The omega is the
rarest of all hyperons and consists of three strange quarks.
Professor Appelshäuser
emphasises that the significance of the results goes beyond the verification of
theoretical calculations: "Femtoscopic investigations can significantly
expand our understanding of very dense stellar objects such as neutron stars,
which can contain hyperons in their interior and whose interaction is still
largely unknown."
Publication: Shreyasi Acharya et al. (ALICE
Collaboration): Unveiling the strong interaction among hadrons at the
LHC. Nature, 9. December 2020 – https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-3001-6
Explanatory video by TU Munich on this subject:
Rätselhafte
Neutronensterne – Präzise Messung der starken Wechselwirkung - YouTube
Images may be downloaded here:
https://cds.cern.ch/record/2653650/#4
Caption: In the future, hyperons will be measured at the ALICE detector of the CERN particle accelerator centre. Scientists from Goethe University are part of the ALICE collaboration. Credit: CERN
Further information
Prof.
Dr. Harald Appelshäuser
Institute for Nuclear Physics
Goethe University Frankfurt
Phone: +49 69 798-47034 or 47023
appels@ikf.uni-frankfurt.de
Geoscientists at Goethe University hope for certainty from asteroid samples from space - sample container safely landed on Saturday evening
On Saturday evening (5.12.2020), a container
containing a sample of the asteroid that had been dropped by the Hayabusa 2
space probe landed in the Australian desert. The chemical
"fingerprint" of the water from the asteroid Ryugu could prove that
the water on Earth actually originated from asteroid impacts in the early
history of the Earth. Up to now, asteroids could only be examined after fragments
impacted onto the Earth and therefore contamination by the Earth's water could
not be ruled out. In the coming year, the material sample will be examined by
scientists all over the world, including a scientific team from Goethe
University.
FRANKFURT. When
it was formed, the young proto-Earth was hot and probably circled around the
sun in a very dry zone where water evaporated and was blown into space by the
solar wind. According to one theory, our blue planet came to its great oceans
through watery celestial bodies that hit the earth. As spectral analyses of
comet tails have shown, it was most likely not comets.
This is because in their ice, the ratio of
hydrogen with two protons in its nucleus, deuterium (D), to hydrogen with one
proton in its nucleus (H) is usually different from that on Earth. On the other
hand, the water trapped in certain meteorites - i.e. in fragments of asteroids
that have hit the Earth - is almost exactly the same as terrestrial water. Such
C-class asteroids are highly carbonaceous and come from the outer part of the
asteroid belt that orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter. Ryugu is one of
them.
Prof. Frank Brenker, geoscientist at
Goethe University, will examine the Ryugu sample together with his colleague
Dr. Beverly Tkalcec. He explains: "There are very good scientific
arguments that the D/H ratio we find in meteorites is indeed similar to that of
asteroids in space. Nevertheless, we cannot rule out water vapour contamination
on Earth: after all, 90 percent of an asteroid evaporates when it passes
through the atmosphere, and even if it hits a dry desert, the meteorite can
absorb water until it is found, for example from early morning fog. With the
Ryugu sample we will finally get certainty on this issue".
To this end, from the middle of next year,
the Frankfurt researchers will examine and screen Ryugu samples for their
chemical composition at the particle accelerators ESRF in Grenoble and DESY in
Hamburg. Later in the year, Ryugu samples will be cut with the help of a
focused ion beam and will be examined with a transmission electron microscope
at Goethe University. Tkalcec and Brenker want to determine the exact
geological history of the asteroid. In order to be able to assess the measured
values for the water, but also the organic compounds that occur, it is
immensely important to understand all the processes that led to their formation
in the first place. The temperature achieved by the asteroid is just as
important here as the circumstances of the formation of water-containing
minerals, and the influence of impacts on the surface of the asteroid.
The building blocks for life on Earth may
also come from carbon-rich asteroids such as Ryugu, since sugars and components
of proteins (amino acids) and the hereditary molecule DNA (nucleobases), which could
have been formed from inorganic substances under suitable conditions, have
already been found in meteorites. For this reason as well, numerous scientific
teams from all over the world will be working on the analysis of the Ryugu
samples.
Images for download:
Further
information
Prof. Dr. Frank Brenker
Institute for Geosciences – Nanoscience
Phone: +49 151 68109472
f.brenker@em.uni-frankfurt
International research team discovers shifts in small regulatory RNAs