Related papers: Science of a coffee cup: a physicist walks into a …
Measurements play a crucial role in doing physics: Their results provide the basis on which we adopt or reject physical theories. In this note, we examine the effect of subjecting measurements themselves to our experience. We require that…
Quantum phenomena are typically observable at length and time scales smaller than those of our everyday experience, often involving individual particles or excitations. The past few decades have seen a revolution in the ability to structure…
The study of the Universe and all its contents, the physical phenomena and the evolution of the sky objects has always attracted the Humanity. The Astronomy begins to try to explain these things, others sciences too. Therefore, we think a…
Quantum mechanics, devoid of any additional assumption, does not give any theoretical constraint on the projection basis to be used for the measurement process. It is shown in this paper that it does neither allow any physical means for an…
We present an educational approach aimed at introducing the fundamental concepts of quantum mechanics (QM). By exploiting the formal analogy between sound wave behavior in an acoustic pipe (a drinking straw) and the quantum infinite square…
When a quantum object -- a particle as we call it in a non-rigorous way -- is described by a multi-branched wave- function, with the corresponding wave-packets occupying separated regions of the time-space, a frequently asked question is…
In this short essay, we show how computer experiments, and especially visualization, allowed for the investigation and discovery of phenomena which would have passed unnoticed. We shall also highlight the importance of interactivity between…
Particle physics, when taught in the classroom or lecture theatre, suffers from a lack of practical experience by students. Thus, we describe the construction of a fully working small particle physics detector using state of the art…
Using a very simple Gedankenexperiment, I remind the reader that (contrary to what happens in classical mechanics) the energy of a quantum system is inevitably increased just by performing (some) textbook measurements on it. As a direct…
In this paper we discuss the use of sensors incorporated in mobile devices as possible mobile laboratories at the service of teaching experimental sciences. Mobile devices, smartphones, tablets, laptops, microbit cards, are a resource for…
Physics is introduced as a basic matter in the curricula of professional schools (i.e. schools for agriculture, electronic or chemistry experts). Students meet physics in the early years of their training and then continue in vocational…
Recent advances in cooling, control, and measurement of mechanical systems in the quantum regime have opened the possibility of the first direct observation of quantum gravity, at scales achievable in experiments. This paper gives a broad…
Recent decades have seen a rise in the use of physics methods to study different societal phenomena. This development has been due to physicists venturing outside of their traditional domains of interest, but also due to scientists from…
A novel manifestation of nonlocality of quantum mechanics is presented. It is shown that it is possible to ascertain the existence of an object in a given region of space without interacting with it. The method might have practical…
We show how builtin sensors in mobile devices can be used as portable laboratories at the service of teaching experimental sciences, especially physics, in the last years of high school and first years of university. We describe experiments…
In the last years, numerous Physics experiments using smartphone sensors have been reported in the literature. In this presentation we focus on a less-explored feature of the smartphones: the possibility of using (measure and register data)…
We describe a simple experimental apparatus which allows one to observe the wave properties of light in a new way. This apparatus also makes possible to introduce and illustrate, in a very suggestive way, some fundamental principles of…
We report results from a study designed to identify links between undergraduate students' views about experimental physics and their engagement in multiweek projects in lab courses. Using surveys and interviews, we explored whether students…
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…
This is a report of a course on modern physics designed and taught to undergraduate science and engineering students in the Spring of 2013. The course, meant for freshmen, attempts to integrate statistical mechanics into non-classical…