Understanding what the orbit of the Moon look like when viewed from the reference frame of the Sun presents some difficulties to highschool students. The approach described in this paper to the correct representation of the Moon’s trajectory is an example of how a physics problem can be schematized an simplified. […]
The article describes a school activity in which two different explanations of why airplanes fly are compared and discussed. […]
When is radiation important in the discharge of a capacitor? When is it negligible? The answer depends on many geometrical and physical parameters. Reasonable estimates and suitable approximations/schematizations find that the radiated energy is negligible compared to the Joule dissipation unless a small capacitance is used and the circuit is a loop comparable in size to the capacitor. […]
We suggest a simple experimental method to let the students understand the Physics of the sound. The method can be carried out at school, but also as homework, provided that students have a PC and some other easily available items such as tuning forks, […]
A short phenomenological description of the behaviour of the classic low-temperature superconductors is given. A brief history of the progresses achieved during the past half century in the search of “high temperature superconductors” introduces to the recent discovery of the new ceramic superconductors. […]