This article describes the goals, motivations and organization of the French National Physics Olympiads that began in the school year 1991-1992 and reports the Statutes of the competition. […]
The software Cabri Géomètre and a geometrical method essentially due to Richard Feynman are used to developa didactical approach towards Kepler’s first law (the law of elliptical orbits), starting from Newton’s gravitational law 1/R2. […]
Two small magnets applied to a simple spring-mass system offer remarkable insight into non-linear oscillation phenomena. We observed amplitude jumps and hysteresis in forced oscillations but not the transition to chaotic motions because the system, after a more or less complicated transitory, […]
Schemes of common sense knowledge of Italian students and teachers were inferred from the answers to a paper-and-pencil test concerning real-life situations involving thermal phenomena. Concept maps drawn from the test show that the schemes are richer and less detached from the scientific framework than generally supposed. […]
Schemes of commonsense knowledge of Italian students and teachers have been inferred by analyzing the answer to a paper and pencil test whose items are centered about real life situations involving thermal phenomena. The analysis, performed by the use of concept maps, […]
In recent years work on students’ conceptions attracted the attention of people engaged in doing research on difficulties in learning physics. This paper shows that the origin of this kind of work can be traced back to a didactical programme starting many tears ago. […]