Experiments with mobile devices — A retrospective on 10 years of iPhysicsLabs

Smartphones and tablet PCs are increasingly part of everyday life—for both the younger and the older generation. Tablet PCs are also increasingly being used in schools, although such devices have primarily been used so far as a substitute for notebooks (e.g., as cognitive tools). In addition they can also be used as experimental tools, especially in science classes.

Inspired by the early article of Raymond F. Wisman and Kyle Forinash,¹ we took our own first steps in this direction in 2009/2010 and recognized very quickly the tremendous opportunities in this idea.^2,3 Following this, we wanted to extend this “lab in the pocket” idea by integrating it into well-established learning theories and systematically studying these opportunities across a broad range of physics topics.

Although we did not set out to found a new direction, we wanted to establish this initiative through collaboration by inviting as many colleagues as possible to join with us. This led us to the idea for starting the “iPhysicsLabs” column in The Physics Teacher.⁴ And now, after 10 successful years and some breakthrough ideas delivered by different colleagues, it has been a pleasure for us to have brought together so many colleagues from all over the world to work on this fruitful topic. What is more, it seems that we are just at the beginning of our journey, as more and more colleagues engage with our idea by developing their own respective apps, such as the Physics Toolbox from Vieyra Software in 2013, phyphox from RWTH Aachen in 2016,⁵ and PocketLab, as well as by building further communities, such as SmarterPhysics by Martín Monteiro et al. and the Smarte Physik column.⁶ 

With the present article, 87 contributions have appeared so far in the “iPhysicsLabs” column, written by about 160 different authors. Initially, the focus was on experiments that could be performed in the physics classroom, e.g., the study of collision processes^7,8 [S19] of free fall [S2], various pendulum experiments [S6, S7], Atwood’s falling machine [S31], magnetic field measurements [S5, S44], or numerous acoustic analyses (e.g., of acoustic beats [S21]). Such experiments can be integrated into existing educational concepts without significant variation of the traditional instruction and should thus enable teachers to gain initial experience with the smartphone as easily as possible. After the first few years, the focus of the column shifted to experiments that make even greater use of the crucial advantages of mobile devices: As a result of the high mobility of the devices, smartphones can also be used outside the physics classroom, thus enabling the analysis of everyday phenomena. In this way, the repeatedly voiced demand for a stronger contextual connection of physics education is also met in a double way, namely by having students investigate an everyday context with an everyday device that is well known to them. A few examples of this are the investigation of ball speeds in various sports [S23], the observation of an elevator as a spring pendulum [S18], the determination of drag coefficients of various vehicles [A55], the altitude dependence of air pressure [S39], the spilling of coffee and how this can be avoided with a SpillNot [S25], pressure waves when a train enters a tunnel [S36], or the acoustic analysis of church bells (Fig. 1; [S32, S35]).

It is obvious that the built-in accelerometer, gyroscope, and microphone can be used for mechanics and acoustics experiments very easily. That’s one of the main reasons that these topics are mostly addressed in this column. However, several articles have also been published on other areas of physics. Examples include temperature measurement with a simple external sensor [S8], recording of cooling curves [S51], determination of the Curie temperature (Fig. 2; [S65]) and the power frequency [S78], quantitative analysis of magnetic fields [S5, S44, S50], discussion of the lensing equation [S72], determination of the Brewster angle [S61], or experiments on interference at the grating [S1]. Augmented reality can also be a useful addition when experimenting with the smartphone, and the first articles on this have also appeared in the “iPhysicsLabs” column [S47, S60, S63, S73, S74]. The possible applications of the smartphone as a means of experimentation are thus quite diverse and it can be assumed that new sensors will open up many more possibilities in the future.

After 10 years of the “iPhysicsLabs” column, it is now time to say thank you. First, to The Physics Teacher team, including Pamela R. Aycock (Managing Editor), and Jane Chambers (Senior Publications Editor). We sincerely thank you for the excellent collaboration over the past years and for all the time you invest in this column. We also thank the more than 160 authors who keep coming up with very creative and sometimes quite amazing experiments and submitting them for publication so far. Without such a large group of authors, the column would not be feasible, and we look forward to many more innovative ideas from you! Thanks also go to the readers of the column who keep sending us feedback and thus support us in our work as well. We hope that we have already been able to make a positive contribution to physics education with this column and that we will continue to do so in the future together with everyone involved! A final thank you goes to the publisher Springer Nature, where an edited volume of the articles of this column is expected to be published in the next months.⁹