Related papers: Physics for the masses: teaching Einsteinian gravi…
This document gathers the notes of a 30-hour review course on gravitation, which I delivered in January 2018 and January 2019 at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences of Cameroon (AIMS-Cameroon). Its main goal is to propose a big…
Studying quantum physics in upper secondary school is now a standard practice (Stadermann et al., 2019). But given the context of science education, with low recruitment numbers in higher education and poor attitudes towards science, it…
Popular media is an unspoken yet ever-present element of the physics landscape and a tool we can utilize in our teaching. It is also well-understood that students enter the physics classroom with a host of conceptions learned from the world…
Quantum field theory has formed the conceptual framework of most of physics for more than sixty years. It incorporates a complete revision of our conception of the nature of matter and existence itself. Yet it is rarely taught, or even…
Gravitation, according to General Relativity, is an attribute of space-time's geometry and hence not a force in the Newtonian sense. This is a consequence of Einstein's equivalence principle, which so far passed all experimental tests with…
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…
There has been a recent stimulus in the study of alternative theories of gravity lately, mostly triggered from combined motivation coming from cosmology/astrophysics and high energy physics. Among the proposed theories, one that has…
These lectures notes contain an introduction to General Relativity. They are addressed to a general mathematical audience with no specific background in physics. The goal is to motivate and explain Einstein's theory of gravity and discuss…
A primary goal of physics is to create mathematical models that allow both predictions and explanations of physical phenomena. We weave maths extensively into our physics instruction beginning in high school, and the level and complexity of…
Introducing gravitational physics at high school provides educational means for bridging the gap between the image of science held by students and science itself. Natural language is fundamental in this learning. It engages students in…
Modern physics is now a regular course for non-physics majors who do not have to take the accompanying laboratory. This lack of an experimental component puts the engineering students at a disadvantage. A possible solution is the use of…
We will follow the growth of gravitational theory in Germany from 1915 to the 1990s, i.e., relativistic theories of gravitation, mainly Einstein's, as a branch of physics in the sense of social, more precisely institutional history. As…
The purpose of this paper is to show the magic of physics by showing the physics of magic. What usually makes magic tricks interesting is that something unexpected occurs. Similarly, demonstrations are interesting inasmuch as they produce…
The Einstein postulates assert an invariance of the propagation speed of light in vacuum for any observer, and which amounts to a presumed absence of any preferred frame. The postulates appear to be directly linked to relativistic effects…
Einstein's theory of General Relativity is the benchmark example for empirical success and mathematical elegance in theoretical physics. However, in spite of being the most successfully tested theory in physics, there are strong theoretical…
Cosmology and GR remain largely inaccessible to high-school teaching due to the advanced prerequisites to master these topics. Integrating them into upper secondary teaching is a significant challenge that remains unresolved. This…
This paper reports the first study on the ability of Year 3 students (ages 7 to 8) to conceptualize Einsteinian concepts. This paper reports that children aged 7-8 are not too young to learn key Einsteinian concepts, and the benefits of…
The discovery of quantum mechanics at the beginning of the last century led to a revolution of the physical world view. Modern experiments, made possible by new techniques on the border of the classical and the quantum regimes offer new…
Einstein's general relativity is the best available theory of gravity. In recent years, spectacular proofs of Einstein's theory have been conducted, which have aroused interest that goes far beyond the narrow circle of specialists. The aim…
The aim of this thesis is to bridge the gap between the world of physics research and secondary education on contemporary quantum physics. We fostered the creation of a generative learning environment formed by quantum physics researchers,…