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This article explores what it can mean to be a woman physics student. A case study approach is used to explore how five women who are studying physics at a Swedish university simultaneously negotiate their doing of physics and their doing of gender. By conceptualising both gender and learning as aspects of identity formation, the analysis of the interviews with the five women offers insights into the nuances and complexities of how women relate to the gendered disciplinary culture of physics. This contrasts how research on gender and physics education has been predominantly concerned with comparisons of female and male students' attitudes and/or achievements. Furthermore, the analysis brings to the fore how it is not just the masculine connotations of physics that shape the experiences of the five women, but also the expectations on female physics students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In line with the cognitive theory of multimedia learning by Moreno and Mayer (2007), an interactive, multimodal learning environment was designed for the pretraining of science concepts in the joint area of physics, chemistry, biology, applied mathematics, and computer sciences. In the experimental set up, a pretest was embedded in order to increase the effect of the treatment. The pretest consisted of short-answer and multiple-choice questions. The results show a high learning gain, especially after applying a pretest. The learning gain was insignificant if no treatment followed the pretest. The pretest effect did not depend on the question type. Time on task was not a significant variable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many of the explanations for girls' disinterest in physics focus on the role of the educational system in creating this situation. Here, we use evidence from free-choice science learning settings to study if this lack of interest is also expressed in non-school settings. Three sets of self-generated questions raised by children, adolescents and adults in the fields of biology and physics were used. The outcomes of this analysis show that the polar pattern previously described in school science settings, in which physics proves significantly less interesting to girls than to boys, while biology is of greater interest to girls than to boys, also appears in free-choice science learning settings. While boys develop an interest in physics with age, girls do not develop such an interest to the same degree. Thus, the initial gap in interest is probably not based on school-related causes, but its widening in later years probably is. A difference was also found between the genders in the type of information requested and in the motivation for raising the questions. Using topics that appeal to girls' interest as the context of science learning could prove beneficial in the process of mainstreaming science education. These topics can be identified using girls' spontaneous questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the study “Invitation to Contemporary Physics,” by Q. Hokim, N. Kumar and C.S. Lam. Physical phenomena that can be observed from extremely cold temperature environments; Significance of computers as an experimental tool in the study of complexity; Contributions of the study to physics teaching.

The article focuses on the living and non-living organisms as the physical basis of life. Modern quantum physics reveals that matter is not composed of matter, but reality is merely potentiality. Material objects and their small constituents, elementary particles, are replaced by haps, small immaterial happenings, which superimpose each other in a complex wave-like fashion and proceed in time in an open, indeterministic but still nonrandom way.

The author discusses the role of the physicists in advancing the research and study on molecular physics. He presents the 50th anniversary of the periodical "Molecular Physics," followed by discussion on the contribution of the periodical to chemistry and physics. The author argues that the concerns and achievements of the journal's founders are valid and relevant today.

The author reflects on the future of the areas of analytical sciences. He states that one needs more than a crystal ball in knowing the future focus in analytical sciences. He also mentions that the discipline of chemical measurement science is still discovering how chemistry and physics can be used in measuring chemical species. The author also invites the reader to write their suggestions and articles regarding the future of each area in analytical sciences.