What are Physics Demonstrations?
The primary goal of an introductory physics course is to develop a conceptual understanding of the relationship between physical laws and real-world phenomena. While used for this purpose, a “Physics Demonstration” is also known as an “instructor’s demonstration” wherein the teacher runs an experiment from his/her teaching platform or as a “desktop experiment” where the students perform simple experiments on their desks. We can expect such visual demonstrations or hands-on experiments to cultivate the students’ abilities to visually understand the concepts and laws of physics and to discover unprecedented phenomena. However, to incorporate a demonstration in a traditional physics lecture, an instructor needs to know when and how he/she uses the demonstration in the lecture. Therefore, we provide the guidelines to implement physics demonstrations effectively in a traditional physics lecture below.