Speaker
Yossi Ben Zion
(Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel)
Description
The emergence of GenAI tools marks a fundamental shift in how students seek and engage with physics explanations. In this study, we examine large-scale changes in information-seeking practices by analyzing longitudinal Google Trends data and Wikipedia page views for core topics in introductory physics across more than 20 countries (2022–2025). We find a substantial global decline in traditional search-based activity. The magnitude of this decline varies systematically by physics domain, with larger effects in Mechanics than in Electromagnetism, and by linguistic context, with sharper declines in predominantly non-English-speaking regions. We discuss the implications of these findings for physics teaching.
| Education level | Age over 18 (excluding teacher education) |
|---|---|
| Physics topic | Interdisciplinary topics |
| Research focus | Digital technologies (multimedia, simulations, AR, VR, remote, games) |
| Research method | Analytic Physics Education Research (Quantitative research) |
| Organizing preference criteria | Research focus |
Author
Yossi Ben Zion
(Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel)
Co-author
Noah D. FINKELSTEIN
(Department of Physics, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA)