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I present a concise review of the Higgs problem which plays a central role in particle physics today. The Higgs of the minimal Standard Model is so far just a conjecture that needs to be verified or discarded at the LHC. Probably the…
We show that it is possible to extract useful information from the straightforward perturbation theory in classical mechanics. Although the secular terms make the perturbation series useless for large time, these expansions yield the…
Radiation by elementary sources is a basic problem in wave physics. We show that the time-domain energy flux radiated from electromagnetic and acoustic subwalength sources exhibits remarkable features. In particular, a subtle trade-off…
Light as a carrier of information and energy plays a fundamental role in both general relativity and quantum physics, linking these areas that are still not fully compliant with each other. Its quantum nature and spatio-temporal structure…
In this article we discuss a model used to introduce the concept of entropy with secondary school students. It can be used to discuss with students the reversibility of time, the tendency towards homogeneity and the link between probability…
This paper surveys the application of geometric algebra to the physics of electrons. It first appeared in 1996 and is reproduced here with only minor modifications. Subjects covered include non-relativistic and relativistic spinors, the…
Some of the basic concepts of topology are explored through known physics problems. This helps us in two ways, one, in motivating the definitions and the concepts, and two, in showing that topological analysis leads to a clearer…
The clockwork is a mechanism for generating light particles with exponentially suppressed interactions in theories which contain no small parameters at the fundamental level. We develop a general description of the clockwork mechanism valid…
In this short presentation, we address two somewhat separate issues. The first one deals with the establishment (vs discovery) of what we call "physical laws". The discussion runs on a "successive approximations" approach, suited to our own…
After many fruitless decades of trying to unify electromagnetism and gravitation, it is now being realized that this can be done only in discrete spacetime, as indeed the author had demonstrated. In this context, a unified description of…
Classical theory asserts that several electromagnetic waves cannot interact with matter if they interfere destructively to zero, whereas quantum mechanics predicts a nontrivial light-matter dynamics even when the average electric field…
The process of constructing knowledge is typically taught to students by having them reproduce established results (e.g., homework problems). An alternative pedagogical strategy is to illustrate this process using an open problem, such as…
In a major advance and simplification of this field, we show that A Local Resolution of the Problem of Time - also viewable as A Local Theory of Background Independence - can at the classical level be described solely by of Lie's…
During recent collaboration with colleagues to revise our institution's general-education curriculum, I encountered many perceptions of what we mean by the Natural Sciences. I was surprised to find that perceptions of scientific pedagogy…
Our conventional understanding of space-time, as well as our notion of geometry, break down once we attempt to describe the very early stages of the evolution of our universe. The extreme physical conditions near the Big Bang necessitate an…
In a companion paper, we discuss students' ability to take advantage of what they learn from a solved problem and transfer their learning to solve a quiz problem that has different surface features but the same underlying physics…
Instead of a linear system of equations for a free electromagnetic field, we propose a nonlinear system of equations. The classical electrodynamics is preseved. The appeared solutions (the electromagnetic fields) having photon properties.…
The Law of Universal Gravitation is part of middle and high school's general physics and astronomy curricula. This topic is included in the most popular physics textbooks available as a fact whose origin remains in the detailed work of Sir…
Understanding the interactions between atoms and light is at the heart of atomic physics. Being able to `experiment' with various system parameters, produce plots of the results and interpret these is very useful, especially for those new…
An introduction to the physics and mathematics of the expanding universe, using no more than high-school level / undergraduate mathematics. Covered are the basics of scale factor expansion, the dynamics of the expanding universe, various…