On Kepler’s first law

Kepler analysed the observations of the planets to discover the elliptical shape of planetary orbits. The mathematical connection between the shape of the orbit and the law of force came with Newton. This article explores both Newton’s general approach and later simplifications.     

The effect of the planet’s number on dynamic characteristics of planetary gear systems

Considering the effect of planet’s number on the dynamic characteristics of the planetary gear system, a translation-torsion lumped-parameter model of 2K-H spur planetary gear system was established. Through the analysis of numerical solution, the results show that 1) When the planet’s number is more than 3, the order of the natural frequency will become the same; 2) When the planet’s number increases, the natural frequencies of planet mode remain invariant, but when it comes to rotational mode and translational mode, the higher order natural frequencies increase and the lower order natural frequencies decrease; 3) The planet’s number has a great impact on the higher order natural frequencies and a little impact on the lower order natural frequencies; and 4) To avoid the resonance, we can appropriately increase or decrease the number of the planet.     

The effect of concept cartoon-embedded worksheets on grade 9 students’ conceptual understanding of Newton’s Laws of Motion

Background: A substantial review study of concept cartoons reports that few studies have indicated their functions. For this reason, the present study illuminates the extent to which concept cartoon-embedded worksheets (through constructivist context) accomplish these functions in conceptual learning.

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to determine the effect of the concept cartoon-embedded worksheets on grade 9 students’ conceptual understanding of Newton’s Laws of Motion.

Sample: Within a quasi-experimental research design with control group, the sample consisted of 102 grade 9 students (aged 15–16 years) enrolled in an Anatolian High School. They were randomly assigned to control (52 students) and experimental groups (50 students).

Design and methods: While the control group followed the existing physics instruction, the experimental one was exposed to the concept cartoon-embedded worksheets. To collect data, two scales (Newton’s Laws of Motion Test –NLMT– and Interview about Instances –IAI) were employed.

Results: The results indicated that the experimental group performed better than did the control group.

Conclusions: It can be deduced that the concept cartoon-embedded worksheets are effective in improving grade 9 students’ conceptual understanding and in replacing their alternative conceptions with scientific ones.     

Governing schooling through ‘what works’: the OECD’s PISA for Schools

This paper explores Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for Schools, a local variant of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD’s) influential PISA that not only assesses an individual school’s performance in reading, mathematics and science against international schooling systems, but also promotes 17 identical examples of ‘best practice’ from ‘world class’ schooling systems (e.g. Shanghai-China, Singapore). Informed by 33 semi-structured interviews with actors across the PISA for Schools policy cycle, and supplemented by the analysis of relevant documents, the paper provides an account of how these concrete examples of best practice are represented in the report received by participating schools. Drawing upon thinking around processes of commensuration and the notion of ‘governing by examples’, the paper argues that PISA for Schools discursively positions participating schools as somehow being commensurable with successful schooling systems, eliding any sense that certain cultural and historical factors – or ‘out of school’ factors – are inexorably linked to student performance. Beyond encouraging the problematic school-level borrowing of policies and practices from contextually distinct schooling systems, I argue that this positions the OECD as both the global expert on education policy and now, with PISA for Schools, the local expert on ‘what works’.     

Newton's Laws of Motion

Section 1.Newton’s First Law of Motion An object will remain at rest or move with constant velocity when thereis no net force acting on it.This is called Newton’s First Law of Motion,orLaw of Inertia.Net force is the sum of all forces acting on an object.     

100 years of Einstein’s theory of Brownian motion: from Pollen grains to protein trains—1

Experimental verification of the theoretical predictions made by Albert Einstein in his paper, published in 1905, on the molecular mechanisms of Brownian motion established the existence of atoms. In the last 100 years Brownian motion has not only revolutionized our fundamental understanding of the nature ofthermal fluctuations in physical systems, but it has also explained many counterintuitive phenomena in earth and environmental sciences as well as in life sciences. This 2-part article begins with a brief historical survey and an introduction to the concepts and theoretical techniques for studying Brownian motion. Then, in Part 2 a discussion on rotational Brownian motion and Brownian shape fluctuations of soft materials is followed by an elementary introduction to two of the hottest topics in this contemporary area of interdisciplinary research, namely,stochastic resonance andBrownian ratchet.     

Deconstructing Arsovski’s proof of Snevily’s conjecture

The combinatorial problem discussed in this article is very simple to state but needs the algebraic machinery of characters of abelian groups.     

Tess’s Losing of Virginity in Kant’s Eyes

Tess is a pure girl in Hardy’s eyes, as it shows in the book’s subtitle. She is sinned in Victorian’s time, however, she is still pure in Kant’s eyes.     

Tess’ s Losing of Virginity in Kant’s Eyes

Tess is a pure girl in Hardy’s eyes, as it shows in the book’s subtitle. She is sinned in Victorian’s time, however, she is still pure in Kant’s eyes.Key words: Tesss purity; Kant     

Governing teacher learning: understanding teachers’ compliance with and critique of standardization

This paper examines how policy pressure for increased performance on standardised measures of student achievement influenced the teacher learning practices that arose in a school setting in Queensland, Australia. Drawing upon research and theorising of governing by numbers, and applications to the governance of education, and particularly teachers’ learning, the research analyses how a group of Year 3 teachers collaborated to better inform themselves about the nature of their students’ learning. The research reveals that the governance of teachers’ learning under current policy conditions was manifest through both teachers’ compliance with and critique of a strong focus upon school, regional, state and national data – specifically, students’ attainment in ‘leveled’ readers and other school-based standardised measures of reading and mathematics, and school, state and regional results on national literacy and numeracy tests. There is little research that highlights the tensions around these numbers as governing technologies in relation to specific formal, ongoing instances of teacher professional development practices. The research cautions against the influence of such governing processes for how they potentially narrow teachers’ attention to more standardized measures of students’ learning, even as teachers may critique these more reductive effects.     

Confucius’s view of learning

Drawing textual evidences from the Analects (Lunyu論語) and other Confucian classics, this article attempts to clarify the contents, methods, and ultimately the nature of learning in the eyes of Confucius. The paper set out to argue that a better understanding of the concept of learning by Confucius must be angled on: (i) Confucius’s political aspiration and life pursuit (zhi志) rather than his teaching; (ii) The personal preference (hao好) of Confucius along with his zhi that has motivated his study and practice of the finer aspects of the Zhou legacies. And on the above basis, the paper suggests that: (iii) TO BE one’s mandate self (wei ji爲己) is at the core of Confucius’s concept of learning and that naturally determines the methods and characteristics of learning; (iv) the three opening lines of Lunyu in fact made a statement on the way Confucius learns.     

Spinoza’s proposal for a doctrine of children’s education

Abstract

The main objective of this article is to analyze the conceptual connection between the Doctrine of Children’s Education, briefly mentioned in Spinoza’s Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (TIE), and the concept of emendation present at the very center of this Treatise’s title. A close textual exegesis of the opening paragraphs of TIE reveals why such a doctrine cannot be the ascetic renunciation of the content of ordinary life. We shall see instead that a new institution of life shall be possible only through a deep plunge into the understanding of ordinary confused life. A Spinozan Doctrine of Children’s Education shall then be conceived as a pedagogy guided by an error mapping principle, i.e., a pedagogy capable of amending the mistaken beliefs of students through their understanding of the way these are produced as real events in the world. This would be an immanent pedagogy, which could be relevant to any form of contemporary thought that seeks a truly liberating education.     

Analysis of Satire in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels

As one of Jonathan Swift masterpieces, Gulliver’s Travels chronicles Lemuel Gulliver’s four odd voyages in the form of a travel log. With sharp satire, Swift ridicules vices of England and the whole Europe in the early 18th century. The article ana lyzes the art and specific usage of satiric techniques in Gulliver’s Travels.     

Young people’s and parent’s perceptions of managed moves

The current research aimed to increase understanding of the experiences of young people and their parents of managed moves, what contributed to success and the nature of the challenges experienced. The study was conducted in one English Local Authority, where five young people and their parents were interviewed. Five superordinate themes emerged from the interviews, relating to: the initial process (people, trail period, managed moves as a positive solution); the reasons for the move (bullying/social isolation, breakdown in relationships with staff); conceptions of success (happiness, improved self-perceptions, learning and progress), factors contributing to success (fresh start/clean slate; home–school communication; pastoral support, school suitability) and problems arising (moving a problem, narratives around young people, timing and family stress). The findings are discussed in relation to implications for practice.     

Heisenberg’s invention of matrices

Richard Feynman once said: “nobody understands quantum mechanics”. Still, those who devised it are perhaps the ones closest to understanding their creation. It suggests that whenever the weirdness of quantum mechanics haunts you, it is better to go back to its creators in terms of their original publications. In the present article, the author has tried to seek help from Heisenberg’s 1925 paper, in order to reduce the weirdness of going from classical observables to quantum operators.     

Analysis of Tess’ s Tragedy

Tess of the D’Urbervilles(1891),the masterpiece of Thomas Hardy,tells the tragical life story of a beautiful country girl.Although the heroine,Tess,was intelligent,beautiful,industrious and kind-hearted,she was finally hanged as the only victim of the story.The root of her tragedy was caused by the bourgeoisie society.Firstly her tragedy comes from the society:the inequali ty of the law,the false of the religion and the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie society.Secondly,Tess’s tragedy is produced by her own characters.In addition,the tragedy of Tess is inevitable.Thus,Tess’s tragedy was produced by both the society and her own character,which is closely related to the bourgeoisie society.     

Governing good,bad and ugly workplaces? Explaining the paradox of state-steered voluntarism in New Labour’s Skills Strategy

The post-compulsory education and training system in the UK has long been defined as an archetypical voluntarist model. Yet, with the election of a New Labour government in 1997, the relationship between the state as supply-side provider of skills and employers as the demanders of skills began to subtly change. An additional rhetoric emerged in skills policy that suggested a role for the state to shape higher skills demands. This instigated a move towards what is here defined by the oxymoron ‘state-steered voluntarism’; an approach to the governance of skills which aimed to deliver both a demand-led skills system and a system to lead demand. Drawing on policy documents and interviews with key policy-makers, this article offers an interpretive analysis of New Labour’s ideas about the nature of workplaces, and the role of the state and skills providers in response, that explains the existence of policy paradox. We find that New Labour articulated three distinct strategies for governing skills, depending on whether workplaces were perceived to have ‘good’, ‘bad’, or frankly ‘ugly’ skills aspirations. However, whilst this threefold skills strategy seemingly served the purpose of containing multiple policy objectives and creating a graded role for state action, it was also prone to being used selectively by those with vested interests in UK skills policy (i.e. the representatives of businesses and employers and the representatives of employees and learners).