Conveners
Dialogue Between History, Teaching and Dissemination in Physics and Astronomy
- Enrico Giannetto (Università di Bergamo)
In Physics teaching practice, terms and concepts are sometimes used without highlighting the historical and epistemological process that generated them and choosing them to identify and explain a particular phenomenon. This also happens with electromagnetic radiation. To support students in understanding it, we tried to adopt a cultural-historical approach that shapes the epistemological...
The Lorentz force, which is the force acting on a moving charge within an electromagnetic field, is generally introduced in secondary school textbooks as an experimental result: its origin is not deeply described since demonstrating it would require a good grasp of differential calculus. However, the dependence of the Lorentz force on the charge's velocity - and therefore on a specific...
According to Faraday, there was nothing more instructive than a burning candle for the juvenile audience of his time. This topic can still be educational for our pupils if we actualize some of its phenomena. First, let us expose the flame of a candle to the rays of the sun, or put it in front of the light of a video projector: we will show that on a screen made of a white sheet of paper not...
In a world where the second quantum revolution drives the study of physics orienting much research toward technological developments, physics courses often focus more on the applied aspects of Quantum Mechanics than on the epistemological ones. This technological shift of goals is quite widespread, and certainly not limited to Quantum Mechanics alone. Indeed, academic proposals to transform...
