Related papers: Research and teaching in physics at the University…
We examine the sub-field of philosophy of science using a new method developed in information science, Referenced Publication Years Spectroscopy (RPYS). RPYS allows us to identify peak years in citations in a field, which promises to help…
The Sun has been observed through a telescope for four centuries. However, its study made a prodigious leap at the end of the nineteenth century with the appearance of photography and spectroscopy, then at the beginning of the following…
Over the past 10 years, we have developed at University Paris Sud a first year course on geometrical optics centered on experimentation. In contrast with the traditional top-down learning structure usually applied at university, in which…
The story told in this autobiographical perspective begins fifty years ago at the 1967 Gordon Research Conference on the Physics and Chemistry of Liquids. It traces developments in liquid-state science from that time, including…
I have merged the lecture notes (in french) of two 24 hour courses I taught at the university Pierre-et-Marie Curie (Paris 6) during the first semester of the academic year 2013-2014. The first one was devoted to the general material that…
Physics education research has probed for the relevance of physics in students' everyday lives. Attitudinal and epistemological surveys have asked students if they think of or use physics in their daily lives. We have previously documented…
We review, in a historical perspective, developments in physics which led to the emergence of unifying ideas and theories. Some attention is paid to the theoretical programme that started in the second decade of the XXth century and whose…
Dawning neutron physics was more complex than one might expect. The chance that the neutron comprised a proton and an electron was diffusely taken into account after the discovery of the neutron. Moreover, uncertainties persisted about the…
The amount of published research in Physics Education Research (PER) shows, on one hand, an increasing interest in the design and development of high performance physics teaching strategies, and, on the other hand, it tries to understand…
This paper takes James David Forbes' Encyclopaedia Britannica entry, Dissertation Sixth, as a lens to examine physics as a cognitive, practical, and social, enterprise. Forbes wrote this survey of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century…
This paper re-centres the discussion of student learning in physics to focus on context. In order to do so, a theoretically-motivated understanding of context is developed. Given a well-defined notion of context, data from a novel…
Starting with Einstein's famous papers of 1905, we review some of the ensuing developments and their impact on present-day physics. We attempt to cover topics that are of interest to historians and philosophers of science as well as to…
I recall my "first hour" events following on my meeting in Fall 1968 in the classroom with my academic teacher and thesis mentor Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. multiple Walter Greiner. My comments focus on the creation of the new "strong fields" domain…
In the Italian education system, secondary students (ages 14-19) are confronted with the foundations of quantum physics during the final term of scientific high school (pre-university year). The Italian Ministry of Education, University and…
This article gives an account of a teaching experience carried out from 2008 to 2021 at the university of Franche-Comt{\'e} as an answer to the ministerial command of proposing cross-disciplinary courses in the curricula. The goal of the…
Euler stressed the importance of hypotheses, which he thought were the only means of arriving at a certain knowledge of the physical causes, essential to establish the laws of physics. This thought was communicated to Emilie du Chatelet in…
This paper deals with the Physics Institute of via Panisperna in Rome, getting ready for investigation on neutron physics before Fermi's discovery of neutron-induced radioactivity. The importance of nuclear research had been acknowledged in…
The evolution of theoretical physics in the XX century differs significantly from that in XVII-XIX centuries. While continuous progress is observed for theoretical physics in XVII-XIX centuries, modern physics contains many questions that…
I discuss and connect a number of topics in small-x physics at HERA and at LHC, pointing out recent progress and open questions in theory and phenomenology.
This paper describes the development of a new university physics course designed to integrate physics, education, research, and community partnerships. The coordinated system of activities links the new course to local community efforts in…