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Quantum mechanics is a field often considered very mathematical, abstract, and unintuitive. One way some instructors are hoping to help familiarize their students with these complex topics is to have the students see quantum effects in…
Fitting models to measured data is one of the standard tasks in the natural sciences, typically addressed early on in physics education in the context of laboratory courses, in which statistical methods play a central role in analysing and…
Nowadays, automation not only dominates industry but becomes more and more a part of our private, everyday lives. Following the notion of increased convenience and more time for the "important things in life", automation relieves us from…
We describe a series of experiments done using a commercially available optical pumping apparatus that is currently being used in physics teaching labs at over one hundred universities. Our focus here is to provide an extensive and detailed…
The educational use of video and multimedia is increasing rapidly in secondary and higher education across all disciplines. Videos for physics education can be found in many universities and other educational institutions websites all over…
The past decade has seen atomic Bose-Einstein condensates emerge as a promising prototype system to explore the quantum mechanical form of turbulence, buoyed by a powerful experimental toolbox to control and manipulate the fluid, and the…
Many concepts of physical optics can be visually illustrated on a relatively simple optical setup in a table-top format, not requiring any very specific equipment. Diffraction, interferences, speckle, image formation, Fourier optics,…
Statistical physics has proven to be a very fruitful framework to describe phenomena outside the realm of traditional physics. The last years have witnessed the attempt by physicists to study collective phenomena emerging from the…
Quantum vacuum experiments are becoming a flexible tool for investigating fundamental physics. They are particularly powerful for searching for new light but weakly interacting degrees of freedom and are thus complementary to…
Humans have rich understanding of liquid containers and their contents; for example, we can effortlessly pour water from a pitcher to a cup. Doing so requires estimating the volume of the cup, approximating the amount of water in the…
In this paper we have two aims: first, to draw attention to the close connexion between interpretation and scientific understanding; second, to give a detailed account of how theories without a spacetime can be interpreted, and so of how…
We theoretically introduce and experimentally demonstrate the realization of a nonclassicality test that allows for arbitrarily low detection efficiency without invoking any extra assumptions as independence of the devices. Our test and its…
The objective of this paper is to share our enthusiasm for optical pumping experiments and to encourage their use in researches on practical physics. The experimental technique has been well developed and the apparatus sophisticated, but,…
Although osmosis is a familiar phenomenon, and of pivotal importance in natural systems, it is seldom explained how it might work on the molecular level (if treated at all in physics text books). The standard treatment of osmosis in…
The ability to emotionally or intellectually understand another person's thoughts and feelings-empathy-can foster critical connections that facilitate learning and collaboration. We present a case study of physics faculty that examines…
While the relation between visualization and scientific understanding has been a topic of long-standing discussion, recent developments in physics have pushed the boundaries of this debate to new and still unexplored realms. For it is…
After a brief digression on the current landscape of theoretical physics and on some open questions pertaining to coherence with experimental results, still to be settled, it is shown that the properties of the Deformed Minkowski space lead…
Within the wide class of disordered materials, spin glasses occupy a special place because of their conceptually simple definition of randomly interacting spins. Their modelling has triggered spectacular developments of out-of-equilibrium…
Glass-forming liquids have been extensively studied in recent decades, but there is still no theory that fully describes these systems, and the diversity of treatments is in itself a barrier to understanding. Here we introduce a new simple…
Instruction in quantum mechanics is becoming increasingly important as the field is not only a key part of modern physics research, but is also important for emerging technologies. However, many students regard quantum mechanics as a…