Seeing How Fitting Process Works

TL;DR

This paper introduces a visual method using a smartphone camera and GeoGebra to help secondary students understand the physical meaning of the fitting process in RC circuit analysis.

Contribution

It presents an innovative, accessible approach to teaching the fitting process by visually demonstrating it through a smartphone and software tools, bridging the gap in physics education.

Findings

Students can visually grasp the fitting process.

The method effectively estimates the RC circuit time constant.

Enhances understanding of the physical meaning behind data fitting.

Abstract

A common problem in teaching Physics in secondary school is due to the gap in terms of difficulty between the physical concepts and the mathematical tools which are necessary to study them quantitatively. Advanced statistical estimators are commonly introduced only a couple of years later than some common physical topics, such as e.g. the electronic circuit analysis. Filling this gap with alternative methods appears to be opportune, in order to let the students reach a full comprehension of the issue they are facing with. In this work we use a smartphone camera and GeoGebra to propose a visual method for understanding the physical meaning of a fitting process. The time constant of an RC circuit is estimated by fitting the discharge curve of a capacitor visualized on the screen of an oscilloscope.