

Unit Four:
Topical
Teaching II
 Unit Learning
Outcomes
 After completion of this unit the learner will be
able to:
 Identify relatively difficult topics in school
physics curriculum 
 Identify the learning difficulties of students in
relation to the physics topics;
 Be aware of the available teaching resources
to each the physics topics;
 Substantiate their professional decisions and
actions with research bases from physics
education research literature;
 Be familiar with the different strategies of
teaching the different challenging physics
topics in school curriculum;
 Design and test experiments that help
secondary school students to learn the
different challenging physics topics concepts;
 Plan appropriate lessons to the grade levels
and the diverse students need on the different
challenging physics topics concepts; and
Develop crucial teaching aides that help
secondary school students visualize the
complex concepts and principles of the physics
Section 4.1. Teaching about Simple
mechanics and Equilibrium

Do you sense
something
that will
What is
ultimately be
equilibrium
a source of
and what is
confusion to
statics?
students in
the use of
these terms?
 Cont…
 Equilibrium and statics are concepts


used in physics and engineering to
describe the state of an object or
system.
 Equilibrium refers to the state of
balance or stability of an object or
system. In physics, it is defined as the
state where the net force acting on an
object is zero, and the object is either
at rest or moving at a constant velocity.
In other words, the object is not
accelerating, and its motion is stable.
Equilibrium can also apply to other
systems, such as chemical reactions or
economic models, where there is a
balance between inputs and outputs or
supply and demand.
 Cont….
 Statics, on the other hand, is the
branch of physics that deals with

objects that are at rest or in
equilibrium. It focuses on the forces
acting on an object and how they affect
its motion or stability. Statics helps
engineers and scientists analyze and
design structures, machines, and other
systems to ensure they can withstand
various forces and stresses without
moving or collapsing.
 In summary, equilibrium is the state of
balance or stability, while statics is the
study of objects in equilibrium and how
to design systems to maintain
equilibrium.
 Cont…



 Simple machine


 Simple machines are mechanical
devices that help us to do our work in a
simpler manner. They do this in one of
the three ways: by changing direction
of application of force, by multiplying
speed, or by multiplying force. There is
no simple machine that creates energy
either practically or theoretically.
 Simple machines can be classified into
the following six categories: Inclined
plane, Lever, Wheel and Axle, Pulley,
Screw, and Wedge.
Cont….


 Lever
 Levers can be classified into three
based on where the furculum is with
respect to the point of exertion of the

load and the effort. These class are
called first order, second order and
third order levers.
 Cont…
Pulley
 Pulley systems can be single-fixed

pulley, single-movable pulley, a block
and tackle.
Wheel and Axle
 A wheel and axle can be a simple wheel
and axle or a differential pulley.
Inclined plane
The inclined plane, the wedge, and the
screw may be considered as basically the
same or studied separately.
Characteristics of simple machines are
measured and discussed in terms of
certain common properties. The
commonly used properties in describing
the use of these devices are: mechanical
advantage, velocity ratio, and efficiency.
 Mechanical Advantage


 This is the property of the machine in
helping us to lift heavier load with
smaller amount of force. Therefore, it is
defined as the ration of the lead to the
effort. Since there is some energy loss
in the system and therefore some of the
force exerted on the system goes into
doing work against internal forces such
as friction and the weight of some parts
of the machine, mechanical advantage
is viewed in two deferent ways. These
two are the “actual” and the “ideal”
mechanical advantages. Actual
Mechanical Advantage: Ideal Mechanical
Advantage:
 Velocity Ratio

 When viewed from speed
multiplication purpose of a simple
machine, the velocity ratio becomes
important. Velocity ratio is defined
as the ratio of the distance covered
by the point of effort to the distance
covered by the load within the same
time intervals. This is actually the
same as the ideal mechanical
advantage.
 Efficiency

 This is the energy consideration
of a simple machine. Due to the
mechanical movements of the
different parts of the simple
machine energy is consumed with
in the machine without going into
doing the work intended.
Therefore, the efficiency, the ratio
of the output work to the input
work will be always less than 1.
Section 4.2. Teaching
about Hydrostatics

Fluid
 Fluid in scientific terms, refers to
a substance that can flow and
take the shape of its container.
This includes both liquids and
gases. Fluids have unique
properties, such as viscosity
(resistance to flow) and density,
which can be studied in various
contexts, including physics,
chemistry, and engineering.
 Cont…

 When teaching about fluids in
secondary school, the following
approaches can be effective:
 Conceptual Understanding:
 Definitions: Start with basic
definitions of fluids, distinguishing
between liquids and gases.
 Properties: Discuss properties
like density, viscosity, surface
tension, and buoyancy.
 Cont…

Experiments and Demonstrations:
Hands-On Activities: Use simple
experiments to demonstrate fluid
properties. For example, comparing the
flow rates of different liquids or observing
how objects behave in water versus air.
Real-World Applications:
 Everyday Examples: Relate fluid
concepts to real-life situations, such as
how airplanes fly (aerodynamics), how
boats float (buoyancy), and how blood
circulates (circulatory system).
Critical Thinking and Inquiry:
 Encourage students to ask questions and
conduct their own investigations into
fluid behavior.
 Demonstration 1:
 Most of the students, and many physics

teachers think that solids can not float in
fluids. Get a rock or brick heavy enough
so that it exerts a strain on the muscles
that you use to lift it. Do not use iron. It is
too heavy to observe the effect. The
density of most rocks is around
2.5gm/cm3 . Lower the rock into a pail of
water and feel the decrease in the force
needed to support it. If you want to make
the experiment more quantitative
suspend it from a rubber band. Lower it
again into water and observe the
decrease in the starch of the rubber
band. You can let students play with this
demo as long as they want. But, at last
ask them to explain their observations.
Encourage them to make predictions
about other objects and do the
observations again.
 Demonstration
 Many students think2: that when a body
is floating in liquid in a container, it will

loose its weight to the liquid and
therefore its weight no more be
detectable. You need a platform
weighing scale for this experiment.
Measure the weight of water in a
container and weigh an object that can
float in water.
 Demonstration
3:

 Aristotelian view of motion still
guides students view: air and fire
move up and water and earth
move down. Students do not
believe that air pushes down. Good
demonstration is the siphon. Very
few students ever have observed a
siphon. Get preferably two plastic
straws that have corrugated
elbows. Crease the end of one
straw, inset it into the other and
you can produce an airtight U tube.
Siphon water up over the edge of a
raised bowl and down into a lower
bowl.
Cont…

 Demonstration 4:


 Significant number of students believe
that pressure in liquid is the same
 everywhere.
 Get a milk carton or a tall can. Make
three or four holes with little
 nail and close the holes with wax or
plaster. Feel it with water and
 ask students to guess what will happen
when you remove the covering
 from the holes. Let them make
prediction about the distance to water
 flowing out will reach. Which water
from the holes will go further?
Cont…


 Demonstration 5:
 Dip a straw into a glass of water

(preferably colored) and blow hard
across the upper end of the straw
with another straw. Observe what will
happen to the level of water in the
straw. What do you expect? Let
students try to explain their
observation. The effect is quit
unexpected and exciting for students.
For such demonstrations to be
effective educationally, they should
engage students actively, should
involve not only observation, but
prediction and interpretation of the
observation is very essential.
Cont…


Section 4.3. Teaching about Geometrical
Optics and Physical Optics

 The whole of geometrical optics


depends on the thee basic laws. Before,
investigating the behavior of light in
particular optical devices like curved
mirrors and lenses, it is critical for the
physics teacher to make sure that
students are comfortable about their
understanding of these laws.
Laws of Geometrical Optics
These laws are:
1. Rectilinear motion: Light propagates in
straight line.
 Cont…

2. Laws of reflection
 When measured with respect to the
normal to the reflecting surface, the
angle of incidence of light is equal to
the angle of reflection.
 The reflected light ray lies in the
plane of the normal line and the
incident ray
 Cont…

Laws of refraction:
 Light ray bends as it crosses a
boundary between two transparent
media. The incident ray, the refracted
ray, and the normal to the boundary
between the two media at the point
of incidence, all lay in the same
plane.
 The ratio of the sins of angles of
incidence and reflection are constant
for a pair of transparent medium.
This is called Snell’s law.
Cont…


Section 1. 1. The
Teaching of Thermal
Physics

 
 Different Kinds of Thermometers:
1. Liquid-in-a-glass Thermometers:
The most common thermometers
exploiting the fact that liquids usually
expand as they get hotter. The most
common liquids are mercury and
alcohol but not water? A liquid in a
glass thermometer has limited range of
use by its freezing and melting points.
For mercury this range of application is
between –38°c and +260°c while for
alcohol –114°c and +78°c.
Amplification technique is used with
liquid-in-a-glass thermometers because
their expansion rates are so small
(about 0.018% per degrees). The large
ball like container and the narrow
capillarity tube are for this reason.
 Cont…
 2. The Thermocouple: A thermocouple
utilizes the changes in the electrical

properties of a pair of conducting wires.
Two wires of dissimilar materials are
welded at one end and the other two ends
are connected with a voltmeter. The
voltage between the ends of the pair of
wires is a function of temperature at the
junction. A standard metals used for most
thermocouples are copper and
constantan. When the voltmeter is at
room temperature (20°c) and the junction
at 100°c, the voltage produced will be
3.48mV. When the junction temperature
decreases the generated voltage
decreases, when temperature increases it
also increases nearly linearly. The range of
temperature for a typical thermocouple is
from – 269°c to 2300°c. You find a
thermocouple in car temperature gauge.
This is because the temperature in car’s
engine is so high that a liquid in a glass
 Cont….

Figure 2: Thermocouple for an electrical

thermometer
 Cont…
 3. Electrical Resistance Thermometer:
The resistance of metals generally

increases with increasing temperature. This
is a very reproducible effect and is used in
many precession thermometers. A platinum
coil has a stable temperature variation over
–258 to 900°c. 4.
 4. Thermistors: These are semiconductor
thermometers whose temperature
characteristics is opposite to that of metal
resistors. The resistance of thermistors
decreases as temperature increases and
this variation so large for a very small
change in temperature. Thermistors are
used in cases where sensitivity much larger
than those of thermocouples and platinum
thermometers are needed. Nevertheless,
the range of temperature variations and
durability of the these thermometers over
time is so limited. Those digital
thermometers you in hospitals and clinics
are usually thermistor thermometers.
 Cont…
 5. Bimetallic Strips: Nearly all of
secondary school students and their

teachers know what bimetallic strips,
but they do not know them as
thermometers. Rather, they know
bimetallic strips as circuit breakers.
Bimetallic strips are made of two
different metals of considerable
difference in their expansion rate with
temperature. When these to metal
strips are fasten together, the thermal
expansion cause them to bend in one
or the other direction depending on the
increase or decrease of the
temperature. Bimetallic strips are made
into spiral coils and an indicator needle
is attached to its one end. So, as the
coils bending changes the needle
deflects and show the temperature on a
scale.
Cont…


 Cont…
 6. Gas Thermometers: When heat is
fed into a gas, the pressure of the gas

increases, or if the pressure is kept
constant, the volume increases. Either
of these can be made into a
thermometer. All the other
thermometers depend critically on the
nature and purity of the materials
used. However, under the right
conditions, the behavior of gas
thermometers is almost independent
of the type of gas used. Besides, under
these conditions the temperature
response of gases is simple and well
understood.
 Cont…
 Problems Physics Teachers Should be Aware
of about Calibration of Thermometers:


 1. The thermometer must be small
compared with the system whose
temperature is being measured. If you have
a small amount of water and a great big air
thermometer, you might disturb the
temperature of the thing that you are trying
to measure, or, during calibration, not have
the sensitive part of the thermometer at a
uniform temperature.
 2. There is a subtle problem about when the
thermometer should be read. When a
thermometer is first moved to a new
environment, it takes some time for the
reading to settle down. Indeed, when we
read the temperature on a thermometer,
we are reading the temperature of the
thermometer. We assume that the
thermometer and the environment have
been together long enough so that the two
have come to an equilibrium, which we
define as being the same temperature.
 Cont…
 3. There are problems in trying to measure the
temperature of melting ice. An ice cube in water
may have a temperature of 0 °C at its surface but


-10 °C inside. Furthermore, the water only a short
distance away from the ice cube may be at a
temperature of +5 °C. To satisfy the definition of a
calibration point, the icewater mixture must
consist of finely crushed ice that is kept in
equilibrium with the water by continually stirring.
 4. Ice melts at 0 °C by definition, but water does
not necessarily freeze at 0 °C. Pure water under
clean conditions may go well below 0 °C before
suddenly crystallizing. This happens frequently in
the atmosphere.Ordinary tap water in an ordinary
glass is usually sufficiently contaminated so that it
will freeze at 0 °C or very slightly below.
 5. It is relatively easy to keep the thermometer
within a degree of the boiling point of water, but
there is no guarantee that the temperature is 100
°C. The boiling point and, to a much smaller
extent, the freezing point depend on the
atmospheric pressure. The boiling point is defined
to be 100 °C at normal atmospheric pressure at
sea level. At normal atmospheric pressure in Addis
Ababa, the boiling point is about 93°C.
 Cont…
 6. Suppose that you calibrate a
mercury thermometer and an


bimetallic strips thermometer in the
manner that we have described.
Clearly, they will both agree at 0 and
100°C, since they were in identical
conditions when they were marked. In
each case, then, the range between
the two marks was divided into 100
equal parts. If the two thermometers
are now placed in a glass of water and
the mercury thermometer reads 50°C,
is there any guarantee that the
bimetallic thermometer will also read
50°C? There is not. We have no reason
to expect that the expansion rate of
mercury and the rate of bending of the
pair of metals is the same with
increasing temperature.
UNIT SUMMARY
 Some of the secondary school physics
topics are considered as challenging to
teach by physics teachers either due to
their lack of background knowledge or the

abstract nature of the content when
presented to students.
 These topics which are challenging for
teaching but not necessarily difficult for
learning are: Simple mechanics and
Equilibrium, Hydrostatics, Oscillations and
Waves (Mechanical), Geometrical Optics
and Physical Optics, Magnetism and AC-
Circuits, and Thermal Physics.
 In teaching about equilibrium the
recommended teaching sequence is: to
start with familiar objects, represent them
with schematic diagrams, then force
diagrams, and finally free-body diagrams
and mathematical analysis.
 The idea of equilibrium finds its good
application in simple machines and
physics teachers are advised to start with
household tools when teaching about
simple machines.
 Cont…
 The basic simple machines that are
studied in secondary school physics are
levers, inclined plane, pulleys, wheel and

axle, wedge, and screw.
 The teaching of pressure in fluids should
be based on demonstrations so that
students will really develop and refine
their conception of pressure as a distinct
physics concept.
 There are common misconceptions and
alternative conceptions in relation to
these challenging physics topics as there
were with the common place physics.
 For instance, most of the students, and
many physics teachers think that solids
cannot float in fluids. Many students think
that when a body is floating in liquid in a
container, it will lose its weight to the
liquid and therefore its weight no more be
detectable. Aristotelian view of motion
still guides students view: air and fire
move up and water and earth move down.
Students do not believe that air pushes
Other sample alternative
conceptions held by students

 Many students do not recognize that


light is a physical entity, with an
existence apart from its sources and
effects. They do not make a clear
distinction between light and vision.
 Light does not have color (it is white
light) of its own. As it passes through
colored transparent objects, the
objects “paint” the light with color.
 If one half of a lens is covered with an
opaque material (say with cardboard)
only one half of the image on the
screen will be seen. Many students
think that the image of an object
propagates through space and gets
reversed after interring a lens.
 Many students do not differentiate
between temperature and heat. Heat is
“the staff measured by a
 Some students associate temperature
with cold body and heat with very hot
bodies. For many students, heat is a

substance that will flow into or out of a
body such that a body will have more
or less of it. Quite large number of
secondary school completes think that
the minimum temperature that can be
measured by a thermometer is 0°c.
 A body with larger heat capacity is a
body that “has” or “can hold” more
heat than a body of lower heat
capacity.
 Real demonstrations are
recommended to start with these hard
to teach concepts and give enough
time to students to get familiar with
the phenomena rather than running
into the formal treatment of these
topics is key for successful teaching
and learning.
 


THE END!!!