Starting work on something fascinating: a paper about how illustrated science books can help kids aged 7-10 transition from "the wind blows because it wants to" to actual physical reasoning. 📚✨
Artemis Ray
@artemis-ray.bsky.social
🪻 Science, education, photography, literature and raf coffee 🔖 PhD in Physics (Condensed Matter, ISCED lvl 8) 💠 Associate Professor at Physics teaching methods department 🔹 He/him 🔹Love wins artemisray.substack.com
One thing I miss in research is having people to think with. I'm looking for researchers in physics education and science education who enjoy discussing ideas, exchanging draft papers, and reading literature together—not just collaborating on projects, but having genuine scientific conversations.
I was pre-publishing papers from a conference and came across an article about qualitative physics problems. There are very few sources for this type of problem. And that’s a shame—because qualitative problems are such a clever way to diagnose how students think and understand physics concepts.
Short cuts make long delays — J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring
The Fox in the Forest 🦊 In a lush green forest there lived a fox. Every now and again, the fox played with birds, ants, frogs, and small mammals like mice and children. #Fable #ShortStory medium.com/@Max_K_Ray/t...
The Fox in the Forest
In a lush green forest there lived a fox. Every now and again, the fox played with birds, ants, frogs, and small mammals like mice and…
medium.com
Excited to share our new paper on a persistent challenge in science education! 🌌🔭 We found that a large portion of preservice teachers conflate zodiac signs with constellations, and many view astrology as a "gateway" to science.
🐕 Well. Dogs Dogs are our best friends. Maybe for some people they are the only true friends. Do you like dogs, or do you love them? There is a difference. If you like a dog the dog just simply likes you back. And that's enough for you and for the dog.
✨ The Power of the Villain We all know this truth about drama. In every book there must be the hero — the one who holds the sword bravely in the middle of the battle. In every book there has to be a villain — somebody or something that conflicts with the hero.
Things with social media Social media is all over the world today. Tomorrow it will be the same. We’ll be caught liking and scrolling, arguing and shit-posting. We’ll have these fights with strangers and receive hate messages from trolls and whoever else. 1/5
Yeah… so… investigating the physics education area is also researching the links between physics and mathematics. And… OK, I don’t like math. Not because I don’t know it or something else, no. I don’t like math because there are A LOT of articles on math education that must be read.
This is one of the most powerful introductions I’ve used when explaining the theory of relativity (from Lev Okun’s article) to my students. Unfortunately, it’s rare for them to get the answer right—because most school physics textbooks present so many variations of these formalisms.
For our mid-year exam, we tried something new: students had to prepare a video of a physics experiment and present it like a webinar. Think classic—lenses, inclined planes, pulleys, blocks, voltmeters, you name it. 🧪
📚 It’s an intriguing 2021 article by Allaire-Duquette, G. et al. that explores how scientists with a Ph.D. in physics cope with their naïve ideas—misconceptions about scientific phenomena. doi.org/10.1038/s415...
An fMRI study of scientists with a Ph.D. in physics confronted with naive ideas in science - npj Science of Learning
npj Science of Learning - An fMRI study of scientists with a Ph.D. in physics confronted with naive ideas in science
doi.org
I’m a PhD in physics and mathematics. I write research papers. I teach students. And I still make mistakes in math.
Here's the thing — banning social media doesn't protect children. It leaves them alone. New essay on why we're projecting our fears onto a new generation (and why it doesn't work). artemisray.substack.com/p/ban-on-soc...
Four. Ban on Social Media Doesn't Protect—It Leaves Children Alone
Once It Was Books Under the Covers with a Flashlight, Today It's Smartphones in the Dark
artemisray.substack.com
And yet, Charmed—the one born in the magic of the Millennium—remains one of the greatest TV shows ever. Warm, kind, yet unafraid to stir up fears and the darkest corners of the soul, all while offering hope and light. ✨
Before my coming ou… no, not like that… Once, my very best friend at the time recommended "Daring Greatly" by Brené Brown to me. 1/3
OMG. It’s 2026 outside my door, I’m 34, and I’ve just watched Notting Hill—start to finish—for the first time. Masterpiece. Simply a masterpiece. A rom-com? Absolutely. One of the best. Magical, lovely, sometimes cruel… but now, without a doubt, one of my favorites.
Here’s the real problem: there’s just too much to dive into. Academic papers on students’ thinking and misconceptions in science, non-fiction on psychology, pedagogy, and physics; improv; memoirs by Al Pacino, Whoopi Goldberg… and an endless ocean of fiction of all kinds. How does one even choose?
Students know nothing about their teachers’ lives, and teachers know nothing about their students’ lives. They become "functional roles" — always at a distance. -1/5-
Solving a physics problem—whether it’s a calculation, a qualitative question, or an experiment—is about modeling the world through a specific example. It’s a mental process of constructing a chain of events linked by cause and effect, a way to simulate reality in our minds. —1/4—
40 articles (including thesis and conference proceedings). 7 of them in Scopus; 8 in WoS. Not so bad, I think. I also want to try to publish in popular science magazines. . . . Not mentioning my two blogs…
OMG—Piaget’s childhood magic, physics problem-solving, misconceptions, students’ views of the world… and so much more from pedagogy and science… Help…