We re-examine the case of rare-earth magnets rolling down an inclined plane, presenting an approach to conducting quantitative investigations that results in high-quality experimental data connecting simple experiments to a handful of important applications of eddy currents. These include not only magnetic braking but also the characterization of conductive materials, measurement of the thickness of dielectric coatings, and nondestructive evaluation of conductive objects. The simplicity of the proposed experimental setups, which include the use of widely available smart phones to record video that can be post-processed with free software, makes these experiments appealing to high school and college physics students.

A quantum harmonic oscillator coupled to a two-level system provides a tractable model of many physical systems from atoms in an optical cavity, to superconducting qubits coupled to an oscillator, to quantum dots in a photonic crystal. When the system experiences damping, the problem becomes considerably more complicated. We demonstrate how to gain insight by drawing analogies to classical damping. Specifically, we show how a quantum harmonic oscillator coupled to a damped two-level system can display two types of frictional behavior, corresponding to classical motion in a fluid and motion on a rough surface. We further show that this system can be tuned continuously between these two regimes.

Several years ago, we introduced the idea of item response curves (IRC), a simplistic form of item response theory (IRT), to the physics education research community as a way to examine item performance on diagnostic instruments such as the Force Concept Inventory (FCI). We noted that a full-blown analysis using IRT would be a next logical step, which several authors have since taken. In this paper, we show that our simple approach not only yields similar conclusions in the analysis of the performance of items on the FCI to the more sophisticated and complex IRT analyses but also permits additional insights by characterizing both the correct and incorrect answer choices. Our IRC approach can be applied to a variety of multiple-choice assessments but, as applied to a carefully designed instrument such as the FCI, allows us to probe student understanding as a function of ability level through an examination of each answer choice. We imagine that physics teachers could use IRC analysis to identify prominent misconceptions and tailor their instruction to combat those misconceptions, fulfilling the FCI authors’ original intentions for its use. Furthermore, the IRC analysis can assist test designers to improve their assessments by identifying nonfunctioning distractors that can be replaced with distractors attractive to students at various ability levels.