This article discusses what conceptions of knowledge are basic to the performance of scientific activities. It explores the complexity of the processes by which scientific knowledge is built and their relationship with the affective domain and with common sense knowledge. It examines the implications of a totally constructivist perspective on science learning, […]
The paper presents a study aimed at constructing a “physics for teaching”. The study concerns an analysis of the physical contents of spacetime theories carried out from the perspective of designing conceptual paths moving from classical mechanics to general relativity. An example of paths is presented and their main features are pointed out. […]
The following contribution to the last AIF’s Congress outlines a concise didactic excursus on stellar evolution suitable for secondary school students. The proposal, following Galileo’s suggestion about the “book of the Universe”, invites to get the relevance of the study about the origins and of an evolutive process resulting in our very existence. […]
The Piedmontese mathematician Joseph Louis Lagrange died in Paris 200 years ago. His interesting life and his scientific achievements are recalled and described […]
Newtonian gravitational laws explain the motions of planets around the Sun and the motions of double stars around their center of mass. Small deviations from the predictions of these laws have given confirmation of the general relativity theory. Astrophysics, by means of the analysis of the electromagnetic radiation emitted by the celestial bodies permits us to derive the surface temperature of stars, […]
This paper aims at clarifying what education in science may mean in the real context of classroom activities. In particular the meaning of education in physics will be illustrated by looking at the development of concepts and methods within a perspective of continuity in the teaching of science at the level of compulsory education, […]
At the turn of the century, a new approach to science gradually emerged. In this “information approach”, science is not a description of world in itself, but a coding of the information scientists have about the world. This approach was born inside statistical mechanics from the effort of giving a microscopic interpretation of entropy. […]
Different versions of the two slits experiment are investigated, pointing out the peculiar difficulties of its didactic presentation, and the conceptual misunderstandings that a superficial reading of the experience can lead to. […]
The idea that light produces pressure evolved through a series of adoptions and rejections, from the hypothesis of Newton to the experiment of Lebedev, depending on the theory used to describe the nature of light. This article reviews the history of this development. […]
A detailed historical analysis of the development of Einstein’s Generai Relativity from 1907, year of his first paper on gravitation, to 1915, the conclusive year of his work, shows that the turning point of the development was the transformation of the classical gravitational theory into a Riemanian theory of space-time. […]