Practice and exploration of physical modelling instruction

Introducing modelling instruction into college physics helps the students to analyse and understand problems. Moreover, it contributes to students’ understanding of the process of scientists’ cognition of the real world, and the mode of constructing and applying knowledge. In the process of teaching, the teacher instructs the students on selecting, constructing, validating and analysing models. According to the characteristics of the first and second year students, we use Matlab to accomplish the numerical simulations, which can reduce programming intensity and motivates students to examine relevant phenomena and conceptions, and aim at modelling. In this paper, we introduce some examples of the practice of teaching physical modelling and examine the related research in this area.