APPLICATION OF SMARTPHONES AS TEACHING AIDS IN PHYSICS IN UNDERGRADUATE FIRST YEAR COURSES

In this paper, smartphones are presented as alternative equipment for quantitative measuring in home experiments, which provide support to Physics education in first year undergraduate courses. In particular, some quantitative applications regarding the accelerometers of smartphones are going to be discussed. The developed projects include topics such as normal acceleration measurements of uniform circular movement, acceleration measurements of pendulum oscillations, or the study of the law between acceleration and displacement in linear oscillations. The use of smartphones in physics education has definite benefits. Besides being a measurement system with acceptable precision, students are very intrigued and attracted to the idea of using smartphones in the laboratory, discovering the different sensors and possibilities of these devices for the first time. Therefore, abstract magnitudes are related to practical quantitative procedures, which are very interesting to first year technical students, who are eager to learn about the technological fundamentals of their specialization area. On the other hand, the measurement equipment configuration allows go more deeply into some notions, usually approached in an abstract way, such as inertial forces and their dependence on the measurement equipment configuration. In particular, with pendulum oscillations, students can compare the different results obtained when the smartphone rotates, or when it follows a circular transfer movement. The results show the possibilities of this approach, and its advantages when introducing practical projects in undergraduate Physics education.