Innovative educators give new dimensions to physics teaching
Amigo’s model is especially practical in schools with limited laboratory equipment because the tools can be made cheaply and locally.
Text size
Amigo’s model is especially practical in schools with limited laboratory equipment because the tools can be made cheaply and locally.
Two physics professors make the subject of physics easier to understand by moving lessons beyond formulas, lectures, and textbook diagrams.
Dr. Cecilia O. Bucayong of Central Mindanao University in Bukidnon, uses her 3-Dimensional Instructional Apparatus for Vector Operations to physically represent vectors along the xxx, yyy, and zzz axes, then carry out operations such as addition, subtraction, dot products, and cross products, according to CMU.
Engr. Sheila Marie M. Amigo, Master Teacher I of Siay National High School in Zamboanga Sibugay, uses play and improvised objects to explain physics rather than simply memorize it.
Both educators are among the 2026 Outstanding Filipinos awardees of the Metrobank Foundation.
Bucayong’s innovation addresses a persistent challenge in physics: students often see vectors only as arrows on a flat sheet of paper. Her apparatus shows force, velocity, acceleration and displacement in three-dimensional space.
In the coordinate frame, students attach or position arrows, rods, strings, or movable components to show forces or motions with different directions and magnitudes. This way, they can manipulate vectors rather than merely draw them.
Students then translate the model into equations, calculate the resultant’s components and magnitude, and compare the result with the configuration they can see on the apparatus.
Another learning method Bucayong employs is physics meetup where students join online conversations with Filipino educators, scientists and physicists from other countries. The session tackles a question prepared by the students. A guest physicist or scientist joins virtually to explain how the same concept appears in research, engineering, climate science, medicine, astronomy, or technology.
Meanwhile, Amigo conducts lesson on force, motion and friction by grouping learners and making them create small moving models from recycled materials such as bottle caps, cardboard, string, rubber bands, barbecue sticks, old CDs, plastic bottles, or tin cans. Students then use a balloon or cardboard ramp to move the models and measure distance, time, or number of tiles traveled using rulers, tape measures, phone timers, or marked floor spaces.
Learners present why their model car, for example, went farther or stopped sooner, then redesign it. This turns trial and error into evidence-based scientific thinking.
In another activity, bottle-cap “wheels,” marbles, strings, and improvised pulleys can demonstrate circular motion, gravity, energy transfer, momentum, or simple machines.
The key is that students first experience the phenomenon and then name, calculate and explain it. Amigo’s model is especially practical in schools with limited laboratory equipment because the tools can be made cheaply and locally.
Together, the two physics teaching methods show that teachers need not rely only on expensive laboratories. It can emerge from a recycled bottle, a hands-on 3D model, a carefully structured experiment, or a meaningful conversation with a working scientist.
Malacañang questioned what will happen to the evidence gathered by the House prosecution panel on the alleged bribery…
Singapore penalizes bad public behavior. Transport authorities in the island state announced last month that public bus…
Authorities arrested 244 foreign nationals, mostly Chinese, during simultaneous operations against suspected illegal…
The Senate impeachment court’s decision to deny former Senator Antonio Trillanes a subpoena was a consensus reached by…
