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Since the use of digital media opens new possibilities in physics education, pre-service teachers should develop pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) regarding digital media during teacher education. In the joint project DiKoLeP (German for: digital competencies of pre-service teachers in physics) of RWTH Aachen University, the University of Graz and the University of Tübingen, we therefore developed and implemented a university teaching concept with certain core elements to foster this digital-media PCK of pre-service physics teachers. The teaching concept was implemented as a university seminar at the three universities, considering the common core elements as well as individual curricular requirements. We evaluated the teaching concept in a pre-post-design with a recently developed knowledge test to measure digital-media PCK. Our findings indicated that the developed knowledge test is suitable to validly measure the digital-media PCK of pre-service physics teachers. Furthermore, first results of the empirical evaluation at the three participating universities showed a significant increase in students' digital-media PCK with a small-to-medium effect for students who attended the theoretical as well as the practical sessions of the seminar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the use of LiDAR-enabled smartphones to study the dynamics and constants of a damped spring pendulum. Traditional experiments using smartphone accelerometers have limitations in analyzing the damping of the movement. LiDAR technology, which measures distances with high precision, provides a more intuitive alternative for studying the spring pendulum. The article describes the theoretical background, experimental setup, data collection, and data analysis process. The results show that the integration of smartphone-based LiDAR technology is valuable in measuring the oscillation of the damped spring pendulum and analyzing its intrinsic parameters. The article concludes by highlighting the potential of smartphone technology and LiDAR for investigating classical physics phenomena. [Extracted from the article]

The LIDAR sensor built into many smartphones and tablets (mainly iOS devices) can be used to measure the speed of light in water and other transparent media to demonstrate that speed of light depends on the substance it travels through. This adds another feature to the vast opportunities using smartphones in physics education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Metapendulum is a combination of both the simple gravity pendulum and the spring pendulum. Both excite each another and, therefore, can be used as an example of mechanical resonance phenomena. The data of a smartphone's accelerometer can be used to record the acceleration of the pendulum during the oscillation movement. With that, the resonance within the system can be visualized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]