This paper provides an overview of the technology for growing bulk silicon-germanium solid solutions and of the structural properties of the solidified materials.

It is an attempt to summarize and value the methods and efforts applied to the controlled crystallization of silicon germanium melts which were employed during the last four decades.

The especially high degree of segregation makes the system sensitive to small changes of growth conditions, which leads to inhomogeneities and strain. The future availability of homogeneous, low-defect Si-Ge crystals through the whole composition range is briefly discussed

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Romanenko V., Nikitina G.
Saint-Petersburg Branch of Academy of Informatics
Technologies in Education
Saint-Petersburg, Russia
Romanenko V., Nikitina G.Saint-Petersburg Branch of Academy of InformaticsTechnologies in EducationSaint-Petersburg, Russia

«Physics in Higher Education»
JOURNAL of the
MOSCOW
PHYSICAL
SOCIETY Series «B»
V. 2, N 2, 1996

In this article, we propose a new educational method intended to develop creative engineering abilities in younger university students [1], This method was successfuly applied for a number of years in a physics laboratory course.

The main results of our studies are presented here. T he primary idea of the proposed approach is a so-called «method of repeated investigation» [2]. In this method, the students are invited to independently study several microproblems, The results of these studies are, of course, known to the instructors, but are absolutely unknown to the students. Without a doubt, the instructor helps the students solve these problems, but this help is not direct.

The instructor asks a number of special questions, and in some cases gives the students some hints, In the proposed method, assigned exercises and problems connected with them are the same as in usual accepted methods. The novelty in our method lies in the series of special questions. The basis for these questions is the same for all types of exercises. Thus, in working on different exercises, the student must solve the same supplementary problems in each case. These supplementary problems should develop the creative ability of the student.

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Vladimir Romanenko, Larisa Malinovska, Galina Nikitina

The present article summarises some findings of educators from St. Petersburg and Jelgava in the research in competences and skills necessary for engineers and the ways how to improve the process of studies to develop them applying different new methods.

Exchanging of experience among teachers and sharing ideas help a lot to make this process faster and easier; co-operation among teachers promotes also co-operation among students and it, in turn, disseminates information not only at national but also international level. Teachers and students can learn a lot from one another and it allows for omitting of some unnecessary stages in the research processes.

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Sergei Abramovich, Galina V. Nikitinay,Vladimir N. Romanenkoz

The paper describes a number of practical uses of a spreadsheet that vary across the noviceexpert continuum in terms of the development of skills required for career paths in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) disciplines. To this end, three types of skills are introduced: basic, professional and advanced. Using a spreadsheet as a background and Vygotskian perspective on learning and development as a conceptual framework, the paper demonstrates how purposeful applications of the skills transform one type into another, encourage concept learning, and broaden technology integration into problem solving. The relationship between a spreadsheet and other software tools is discussed.

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