Related papers: Energy flow lines as light paths: a didactical ana…
In a lesson on holography a tension is to be found between the ray model, the wave model, the phasor model and the particle model. Lessons depend on the previous experiences of the students, the intentions of the teacher as well as on other…
Energy is no doubt an intuitive concept. Following a previous analysis on the nature of elementary particles and associated elementary quantum fields, the peculiar status and role of energy is scrutinised further at elementary and larger…
It is frequently assumed that the fundamental purpose of vision is to extract information from light and process it in the brain in order to gain knowledge about environmental objects. Treating vision as an information-driven process has…
By means of a novel variational approach and using dual maps techniques and general ideas of dynamical system theory we derive exact results about several models of transport flows, for which we also obtain a complete description of their…
Studying systems where many individual bodies in motion interact with one another is a complex and interesting area. Simple mechanisms that may be determined for biological, chemical, or physical reasons can lead to astonishingly complex…
The research documents the impact of a teaching experiment designed in order to make students consider not only the spectral composition of light but also its intensity when they interpret colour phenomena. The analysis of eight recorded…
This paper proposes a novel perspective on learning, positing it as the pursuit of dynamical invariants -- data combinations that remain constant or exhibit minimal change over time as a system evolves. This concept is underpinned by both…
Experiments violating Bell's inequality appear to indicate deterministic models do not correspond to a realistic theory of quantum mechanics. The theory of pilot waves seemingly overcomes this hurdle via nonlocality and statistical…
Counting how many particles pass through a specific space within a specific time is an interesting question in applied physics and social science. Here a logistic model is developed to estimate the total number of flowing particles. This…
Some interactions between classical or quantum fields and matter are known to be irreversible processes. Here we associate an entropy to the electromagnetic field from well-known notions of statistical quantum mechanics, in particular the…
In turbulent flows, energy flux refers to the transfer of kinetic energy across different scales of motion, a concept that is a cornerstone of turbulence theory. The direction of net energy flux is prescribed by the dimensionality of the…
The limits of linear electrodynamics are reviewed, and possible directions of nonlinear extension are explored. The central theme is that the qualitative character of the empirical successes of quantum electrodynamics must be used as a…
Fluids can behave in a highly irregular, turbulent way. It has long been realised that, therefore, some weak notion of solution is required when studying the fundamental partial differential equations of fluid dynamics, such as the…
Physics Education Research (PER) applies a scientific approach to the question, "How do our students think about and learn physics?" PER allows us to explore such intellectually engaging questions as, "What does it mean to understand…
Drawing on the Data and Predictions strand of the Indicazioni Nazionali per il curricolo 2012, this study proposes a problem based instructional approach to the teaching of probability. More specifically, the study adopts a design based…
We investigate student understanding of energy and momentum concepts at the level of introductory physics by designing and administering a 25-item multiple choice test and conducting individual interviews. We find that most students have…
Electric fields are commonly visualized with field line diagrams, which only unambiguously specify the field's direction. We consider two simple questions. First, can one deduce if an electric field is conservative, as required e.g. in…
In the first part of this paper we review several formalisms which give alternative ways for describing the light. They are: the formalism `baroque' and the Majorana-Oppenheimer form of electrodynamics, the Sachs' theory of Elementary…
Energy-dependent speeds of light have been considered an observable signature of quantum gravity effects. The two simplest dispersion relationships produce either linear or quadratic corrections, in particle energy, to the photon speed. The…
It has, quite recently, become fashionable to study a certain class of holographic-inspired models for the dark energy. These investigations have, indeed, managed to make some significant advances towards explaining the empirical data.…