Abstract The use of technology – including mobile phones – in classrooms is a growing and promising trend, but it still needs research on ways to integrate it in classrooms and on its impacts. We ...propose a low cost educational product where students assemble an Arduino car remotely controlled through a mobile app and use it to study Newton’s third law, of action-reaction forces. The teacher used an inquiry-based approach to prompt students to test towing capacity of the car. Students connected the car to different weights and used a structure of pulleys to investigate the behaviour of fixed and movable pulleys, as well as the forces involved. The goal of the activity is to motivate students to study physics and to facilitate learning. This article describes a pilot implementation of the educational product in a secondary school of Brazil. We used a qualitative approach to evaluate the implementation. Students answered a survey before and after the activities. They also delivered a report and answered questions about the physics involved. The teacher recorded his observations. The product and the strategy showed great potential: these students were more motivated and engaged in the classes and were able to learn the main concepts involved.
Resumo Por se tratar de uma ciência amplamente aplicada nos ramos tecnológicos, é essencial que a física seja ensinada a partir de demonstrações dos fenômenos e com relações entre teoria e prática. ...No entanto, por diversos motivos, os professores optam por aulas puramente expositivas. De maneira geral, verifica-se que, dessa forma, os alunos não se interessam pela disciplina e absorvem o conhecimento de forma mecânica. O presente estudo objetivou a construção de um produto educacional de baixo custo, utilizando a plataforma Arduino, para demonstrar a relação entre as variáveis de estado de um gás ideal em aulas do Ensino Médio. Os resultados demonstraram que, mesmo com materiais simples, é possível a construção de um aparato experimental capaz de extrair dados quantitativos e sua utilização em aula pode contribuir na construção do conhecimento de forma potencialmente significativa.
Abstract Since it is a widely applied science in the technological fields, it is essential that physics be taught from demonstrations of phenomena and relating theory and practice. However, for lots of reasons, teachers choose mainly expository classes. In general, it is verified that, in such way, the students are not interested in the subject and absorb knowledge in a mechanical way. The present study aimed at the construction of a low cost educational product using the Arduino platform to demonstrate the relationship between the state variables of an ideal gas in secondary school classes. The results showed that, even with simple materials, it is possible to construct an experimental apparatus capable to extract quantitative data and its use in class may contribute to the construction of knowledge in a potentially significant way.
This paper considers an optical burst switching network of 16 WDM channels amplified by all-optical gain clamped erbium-doped fiber amplifier. Experimental and numerical investigations are carried ...out in order to determine the impact of the burst length and inter-arrival time in the performance of stabilized amplification. The results show that the design of synchronous burst networks should take into account the characteristics of the clamped amplifier, whereas for asynchronous transmission, the power ripples induced by the critical cases may be neglected.
This paper investigates the performance of an all-optical method for amplification gain control to be applied in the next generation of optical networks. An erbium-doped fiber amplifier is ...implemented in a simple and passive all-optical configuration known as optical gain-clamped optical amplifier (OA). The paper investigates the dynamic performance of the OA and discusses the interplay of amplifier dynamics with different traffic statistics. The investigation concerns exhaustive characterization of bit error rate performances under typical optical burst switching (OBS) traffic as well as special case of sudden power variation at the amplifier input. All obtained results show a reduction in the amplifier output power overshot compared to the case where the same OA operates without any gain stabilization technique. As an example, in the typical OBS traffic scenario, a reduction of 3 dB is observed.
The long-term goal of engineering education is to prepare students to work as engineers. Being a practical profession, laboratories play a crucial role in illustrating concepts and principles as well ...as improving technical skills. In the last decades the use of online resources (simulators and remote labs) has been growing, either as a complementary and/or as an alternative way of developing experimental competences. In the scope of the VISIR+ Project, this work presents the first results of a didactical implementation using simultaneously the remote laboratory VISIR (Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality), simulation and calculus in a Math Course at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC). The preliminary results indicate that the use of several resources increases students' performance, boosting their learning and competence development.
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