Blog | Physicslessons

Blog: Musings on Teaching Science

Mathematical Modeling in Physics: More than “Plug & Chug”

This is based on a presentation that I gave at the Wisconsin Society of Science Teacher’s Annual Conference in March 2017. Introduction...

A case for Problem-based Learning

Introductory physics courses are notoriously filled with a tremendous amount of content, presented in a way that makes sense to...

Teaching Literacy in College Physics

When my son was in kindergarten and first grade, I was annoyed at how much of the day they would spend on literacy, including reading,...

What is the value of textbooks?

If you ever find yourself with a group of other science professors, sooner or later the textbook question comes up. Usually the question...

Homework Problems (or Problems with Homework)

A topic that comes up again and again among my friends and colleagues is the homework question. How much to assign? How frequently to...

Teaching Philosophy

I have been asked many times to share my teaching philosophy with friends or students who are applying for teaching jobs. I hope that...

Intelligibility of Scientific Models

How do scientists go about learning more about the natural world? Many college science professors are actively engaged in the process of...

Do we have to know this for the test?

“Are you going to make us memorize proofs* for the exam?” A student of mine asked me this dreaded question during the first week of...

How Yoga Makes me a Better Science Teacher

We can learn a lot about teaching and learning by going outside of our discipline. Those of us who end up as science teachers were the...