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Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to present an approach capable of solving Burgers' equation. Diagonal Padé approximation with a factorization scheme is applied to find numerical solutions of the one-dimensional Burgers' equation by presenting explicit factoring the polynomials of the approximation. The numerical results obtained by this approach, for various values of viscosity, have been compared with the exact solution and are found to be in good agreement with each other. Design/methodology/approach -In this paper, factorized diagonal Padé approach is applied to solve Burgers' equation. In this method, Burgers' equation is reduced to a system of ordinary differential equations and is solved piecewise analytically to obtain the solution of the problem. Findings -The results of the proposed approach show that when the obtained results are compared to similar methods, this approach gives better accuracy. Also, the graphs with small n values satisfy the physical properties of the problem; therefore, the approach is promising for nonlinear problems.Research limitations/implications -The authors' experiments show that the applied method worked fine with Burgers' equation and they hope to extend it to some other nonlinear problems. Practical implications -The proposed method is easy to implement and the given algorithm is easy to use, even for non experts. The approach is flexible to use high order Padé approximants. Originality/value -In the approach described in the paper, Padé approximation is calculated in a different manner than the classical approach.

In mathematic courses, construction of some concepts by the students in a meaningful way may be complicated. In such circumstances, to embody the concepts application of the required technologies may reinforce learning process. Onset of learning process over daily life events of the student's environment may lure their attention and may enable them to gain from the preliminary knowledge. Therefore, a good initiation may be realized in the course of meaningful learning. The underlying meaning of the abstract concepts by computer animations may be accomplished in class environments. That study is conducted searching out to discover the effects of animations over the learning process in mathematic courses. The study was performed over the 58 university freshman students selected randomly. Thirty-two students constituted the experiment group and 26 students constituted the control group. Computer animations-aided instruction model in constructive form were applied on the experiment group and non-computer-aided instruction model in constructive form were implemented on the control group. Student academic success via a test method developed by explored group with confidence rate .819 (Cronbach's alpha) revealed that data were evaluated by two-way variance analyses. The findings provided from the final test shows that the experiment group students were significantly higher according to the control group students in terms of academic success average scores. Computer animations were observed to be significant to assimilate the derivative concept in a discrete way over the students, to appeal their attention, animations of real life events observed to transform the abstract meanings in the events to a concrete manner. Students of whom the concrete stage is constructed meaningfully found to be tactful in reaching to semi-abstract and abstract stages.

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The aim of this study is to obtain information about students' definitions, mistakes, misconceptions, and van Hiele geometry thinking levels by using the definitions of 4th grade students for geometric shapes of rectangle, square, isosceles triangle, equilateral triangle, and scalene triangle. The study was carried out with 156 primary school 4th grade students. In the study, the case design, one of the qualitative methods, was used. Students were asked to describe geometric shapes. It was observed that most of the 4th grade students participating in the study were in the visualization stage of van Hiele. There are very few definitions of the hierarchical structure in the study. Most correct definitions are in the partitional form. In the study, misconceptions were detected in some of the students.