The use of demonstration experiments during physics lectures is a powerful help for both teacher and students. We suggest that records be preserved with detailed description of materials and methods. A collection of cards, each presenting a single experiment, is being prepared; […]
An experimental activity designed to repeat Millikan’s measurement of the elementary electric charge was performed in a high school. Using a lab instrument, similar in principle to Millikan’s, we look for the quantization property of electric charge we try to estimate its value. […]
We suggest a simple experimental method to let the students understand the Physics of the sound. The method can be carried out at school, but also as homework, provided that students have a PC and some other easily available items such as tuning forks, […]
The article describes a simple experiment to illustrate the exponential decay of a water column. The liquid flows through a capillary tube obtained by removing the wire from a thin electric cable. […]
This paper presents a simple educational on-line experiment about gas (air) transformation. This experiment was performed using an intelligent serial interface (ULI) and a volume transducer designed for this purpose. The paper is divided into two parts: the first explains the design and the calibration of the volume transducer, […]
A new approach to the teaching of electrostatics is described which avoids the well-known conceptual difficulties of the gold leaf electroscope. Simple equipment is used which the pupils can make for themselves for a few pence in a few minutes; and the experiments are both spectacular and fun. […]
A simple meteorological station, connected on-line to a personal computer, has been used at the same time by teachers in physics and science, with students of high level school, in a scientific Liceum. Within the physics course, student made some hardware/software test of the automatic acquisition system; […]
After introducing the concept of electric potential difference to students in the last year of secondary school, an experiment using a variable frequency generator, an oscilloscope and a loudspeaker allowed them to “see” and “hear” variable potential differences. The experiment was the starting point for an empirical introduction to decomposing electrical signals into sinusoidal components. […]
The article is about a recent innovative experience of ‘work-related learning’ which took place in the school year 2015-2016 and involved a third class of Liceo Cecioni, a high school with a scientific specialization. The whole class was involved simultaneously. Our students were equipped with a professional accelerometer VectorNav VN-100: starting from the time series containing the three-axis accelerometer measurements they had to reconstruct, […]
A variation of the “classical” experiment for the measurement of Planck’s constant h using LEDs was proposed at the 2018 AI F Summer school of L’Aquila. This variation, in which the discharge of a capacitor provides the needed variable voltage and the measurements are made with an Arduino board, […]
This article describes a simple method to experiment the relation Q/V=const, by means of the direct measurement of Q and V. The necessary equipment can be easily found in any physics laboratory, as it is basically made of a 0-600V dc generator, […]
In this work it is shown how it is possible to build a simple device: the dripping faucet. This physical system exhibits an extremely interesting dynamic behaviour, useful to introduce the subject of deterministic chaos in high schools […]