Related papers: Die Physikalische Sammlung (Physical Collection)
The role mathematics plays within physics has been of sustained interest for physicists as well as for philosophers and historians of science. We explore this topic by tracing the role the mathematical structure associated with SU(2) has…
Year 2005 was the World Year of Physics, and it was commemorated worldwide as the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's legendary works in which the foundations of at least three areas of modern physics were laid: statistical mechanics,…
In the first decade of the 20th century, the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, founded in 1905, created a modern and well-equipped Physics Institute. In this paper we study the impact that this initiative had on the modernisation of physics…
We examine connections between the mathematics behind methods of drawing geographical maps due, on the one hand to Marinos and Ptolemy (1st-2nd c. CE) and on the other hand to Delisle and Euler (18th century). A recent work by the first two…
At the beginning of the 20th Century there was a growing interest for the investigation of the action of linear groups on the geometry of surfaces. In that context of ideas, the quest for a connection between curvature and the behaviour of…
Felix Klein's so-called Erlangen Program was published in 1872 as professoral dissertation. It proposed a new solution to the problem how to classify and characterize geometries on the basis of projective geometry and group theory. The…
Introductive backgrounds of a new mathematical physics discipline - Quantum Mathematics - are discussed and analyzed both from historical and analytical points of view. The magic properties of the second quantization method, invented by V.…
For decades, perhaps even centuries, the exchange of publications between observatories was the most important source of information on new astronomical results, either in the form of observational data or new scientific theories. In…
As a result of the deep modifications of the French physics and chemistry curricula in upper secondary school during these last three years, the physics department of the Universit\'e Paris Diderot (France) wished to develop a renovation…
We describe an initiative at the University of Bonn, where the students develop and perform a 2 hour physics show for school classes and the general public. The show is entertaining and educational and is aimed at children aged 10 and…
Detlef D\"urr (1951-2021) was a theoretical and mathematical physicist who worked particularly on the foundations of quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, and statistical mechanics. This piece is a rather personal look back at him and his…
All our statements about the physical world are expressed in terms of everyday notions and thus in terms of classical physics. This necessity is behind each of our attempt to extract meaning out of empirical data and to communicate this…
In 1919, Eddington and Dyson led two famous expeditions to measure the bending of light during a total solar eclipse. The results of this effort led to the first experimental confirmation of Einstein's General Relativity and contributed to…
Our understanding of supercooled liquids and glasses has lagged significantly behind that of simple liquids and crystalline solids. This is in part due to the many possibly relevant degrees of freedom that are present due to the disorder…
The origin of quantum physics was the discovery of the base unit of electromagnetic action $h$ by Max Planck in 1900 when he analyzed the experimental results of the black body radiation. This permitted Albert Einstein a few years later to…
Should teachers concentrate on critical thinking, estimation, measurement, and graphing rather than college-clone algorithmic physics in grades K--12? Thus far physics education research offers little substantive guidance. Mathematics…
The field of condensed matter physics had its genesis this century and it has had a remarkable evolution. A closer look at its growth reveals a hidden aim in the collective consciousness of the field - a part of the development this century…
The ``High school class for students with special abilities in physics`` was founded in Nis, Serbia in 2003. The basic aim of this project has been introducing a broadened curriculum of physics, mathematics, computer science, as well as…
Throughout human history, people have used sight to learn about the world, but only in relatively recent times the science of light has been developed. Egyptians and Mesopotamians made the first known lenses out of quartz, giving birth to…
The job of a physicist is to describe Nature. General features, hypotheses and theories help to describe physics phenomena at a more abstract, fundamental level, and are sometimes tacitly assigned some sort of real existence; doing so…