Physics teaching should facilitate students to acquire knowledge, increase metacognitive awareness and motivation for learning physics. The implementation of cooperative learning could be useful for improving teaching. The aim of this research was to examine the effect of cooperative learning (specifically the jigsaw technique) on students’ achievement in physics, metacognitive awareness, and motivation. An experiment with parallel groups (experimental and control) was carried out with 92 seventh-grade students (in lower secondary education). Jigsaw technique was implemented in the experimental group, while the control group was taught using teacher-directed teaching method. Students’ physics achievement, metacognitive awareness and motivation were measured using knowledge tests and questionnaires (before and after the experiment). Statistical analysis included calculations of Cronbach's Alpha coefficient, performance of the Shapiro-Wilk test, Mann-Whitney U test and the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test. The research results showed that the implementation of jigsaw technique in physics classes significantly improved students’ physics achievement, metacognitive awareness, and motivation. Therefore, it can be suggested that this technique is beneficial in lower secondary physics education, and it can be recommended to implement the jigsaw technique in everyday school practice. Keywords: cooperative learning, metacognitive awareness, parallel group design, physics education

We demonstrate, using the example of the dc$+$ac driven overdamped Frenkel-Kontorova model, that an easily calculable measure of complexity can be used for the examination of Shapiro steps in the presence of thermal noise. In real systems, thermal noise causes melting or even disappearance of Shapiro steps, which makes their analysis in the standard way from the response function difficult. Unlike in the conventional approach, here, by calculating the Kolmogorov complexity of certain areas in the response function, we were able to detect Shapiro steps, measure their size with the desired precision, and examine their temperature dependence. The aim of this work is to provide scientists, particularly experimentalists, with an unconventional, but practical and easy tool for examination of Shapiro steps in real systems.

The dispersion relation for noninteracting excitons and the influence of perturbative corrections are examined in the case of pentacene structure. The values of exchange integrals are determined by nonlinear fits to the experimental dispersion data, obtained by the inelastic electron scattering reported in recent experiments. We obtain theoretical dispersion curves along four different directions in the Brillouin zone which possess the same periodicity as the experimental data. We also show that perturbative corrections are negligible since the exciton gap in the dispersion relation is huge in comparison to the exchange integrals.

We demonstrate that certain classes of Schlömilch-like infinite series and series that include generalized hypergeometric functions can be calculated in closed form starting from a simple quantum model of a particle trapped inside an infinite potential well and using principles of quantum mechanics. We provide a general framework based on the Hilbert space eigenproblem that can be applied to different exactly solvable quantum models. Obtaining series from normalization conditions in well-defined quantum problems secures their convergence.

Recently, there has been an increased interest in studying quantum entanglement and quantum coherence. Since both of these properties are attributed to the existence of quantum superposition, it would be useful to determine whether some type of correlation between them exists. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to explore the type of the correlation in several systems with different types of anisotropy. The focus will be on the XY spin chains with the Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction and the type of the mentioned bond will be explored using the quantum renormalization group method.