Interpreting Physics

Motto: "The difference between a good experiment and a good theory is in the fact that the theory gets old quickly and it is replaced by another one, based on more perfect ideas. It will be forgotten quickly. The experiment is something else. The experiment, which has been thought well and performed carefully, will step in the science forever. It will become its part. It is possible to explain such experiment differently in different periods of times." P. L. KAPICA "The laws of nature are so grandiose, that they have to evoke admiration. We can fully relish the feeling only if we can share it with someone. This is not easy affair, however, to share that feeling. The deeper the man plunge into the unknown, the less fellow-travelers one has. In the end of the process, when he arrives there for real where no one else has been before, he is alone." H. SELEY "No scientist can have and even require a guarantee, that his opinions will not be contradicted in the future. He can only hope, that he will set the sufficiently valid and significant relations between the facts, which, even if they will be contradicted later, will serve as a basis of the discoveries of new facts and new coherencies."

INTED2019 Proceedings, 2019

Since the early 1970s it has been pointed out that many higher education students have a fairly large number of mistaken ideas on some Physics topics. Indeed, the term "misconceptions" was introduced for the first time in 1972. This theme is worthy of investigation in order to improve the students' outcomes in basic Physics courses and to tackle the issue of the growing number of dropouts. Consisting of three main stages closely connected with each other, our research aims at identifying, comparing and overcoming the most significant and widespread misconceptions shown by first-year university students enrolled for engineering, in relation to their basic knowledge of Physics, with specific reference to Mechanics, Thermodynamics and Electromagnetism. It is being developed by Politecnico di Milano [ITA] along with Doshisha University [JAP] and Bauman Moscow State Technical University [RUS], which offer Physics and Engineering courses, as well as with Università degli Studi di Trento [ITA], which provides pedagogic support. First of all, data about the above mentioned misconceptions were gathered by each technical institution through the use of an ad hoc test, which consisted of 12 multiple choice quizzes administered to about 750 students attending the 7 courses globally involved in the research. Hence, misconceptions related to the main macro-areas were further classified according to specific headings, i.e. kinematics, heat engine, electric field, among others. Secondly, the misconceptions expressed by the students attending the different universities involved in the research were compared. They appear to be broadly widespread among the freshmen, with Electromagnetism being the macro-area where the students' results are the worst. Throughout the third and final stage of our study, a trial video has been produced to enable students to overcome some significant misconceptions.

2020

In this paper, we expose the limitations of the SI system units, demonstrating that it does not have the capacity to show dimensional homogeneity in all expressions. We then use the MS system to resolve this issue.

Physics has evolved from an attempt by ancient researchers to understand the workings of their immediate surroundings to a body of mathematical descriptions and paradoxical physical interpretations. We have today no rational explanation for the simplest of systems and phenomena, for instance, how a magnet physically attracts another from a distance or by what physical means the Earth prevents the Moon from leaving the Solar System. Not one mathematical physicist can explain in a logical manner why a pen falls to the floor rather than to the ceiling. The equations suggest that 'mass attracts mass' or that 'north attracts south', but these are mere descriptions. They give us no insight as to the physical mechanisms underlying such phenomena. We trace these shortcomings to the nature of the scientific method inherited primarily from 17 th Century researchers. We argue, in essence, that the current version of the scientific method is divorced from authentic Science. Here we propose an alternative – henceforth known as the Rational Scientific Method (capitalized to distinguish it from what is currently regarded as such) – and outline the steps necessary to present rational explanations for physical phenomena.

2010

Physics makes powerful use of mathematics, yet the way this use is made is often poorly understood. Professionals closely integrate their mathematical symbology with physical meaning, resulting in a powerful and productive structure. But because of the way the cognitive system builds expertise through binding, experts may have difficulty in unpacking their wellestablished knowledge in order to understand the difficulties novice students have in learning their subject. This is particularly evident in subjects in which the students are learning to use mathematics to which they have previously been exposed in math classes in complex new ways. In this paper, we propose that some of this unpacking can be facilitated by adopting ideas and methods developed in the field of cognitive semantics, a sub-branch of linguistics devoted to understanding how meaning is associated with language.

This review was inspired by this 460-page book that tells the story of the development of theories of matter. It's title gives the misleading impression that Science now understands the physical universe: it does not. Indeed, its two aims are to explain How the physical world works. 'How' is limited and it utterly fails to address the Why types of questions that Word-Smiths ('Philosophers') have raised; inspired by analogies with failed attempts to model physical objects, as purposeful mini-examples of human agents. This book is basically a history of PHYSICS with an attempt to explain it to the non-physicists. The author falsely assumes that a knowledge of the pre-Newtonian thinking about the World of Nature will help us to understand physics and cosmology thereafter: it does NOT. There are three stages in our views of nature: Historical, Classical and Modern. These are three very different views: as Thomas Kuhn showed, these are very different paradigms that each make a major break with their predecessors. Park clearly shows, in the first 1/3 of the book how we had began to make suitable, abstract mini-examples ("Models") of some simple parts of the world, that is now known as Historical philosophy. Then Classical Physics is briefly covered but wanders off into the Unknown without any real understanding. Modern Physics, being left with only mathematical representations of the invisible 'Objects' that are all we can propose to date. Like most theoretical physicists, his expertise is too heavily invested in mathematical techniques but he has not been able to show that Historical Natural Philosophy helps with making much progress in achieving better understanding of Twentieth Century physics in the final 1/3 of the book. This is a 'Bait-and-Switch' book that tries to use the past to explain modern physics, where Park utterly fails to provide any physical understanding of orthodox, mathematical physics that is all that is left, in the shell of physics today. NB The reviewer takes this opportunity to introduce his relational, unitary model to explain ALL of physics in terms of only electrons in a model understandable to non-scientists and regular physicists.

1966

THE basic problem to be discussed is this: To what extent, in what sense, may the discoveries of physics legitimately conflict with our ordinary common sense views about the world based on our ordinary experience? In order to discuss this question, I consider a particular extreme view about the nature of the worlda view I call Physicalism-which may seem to be supported by the findings of physics, and which asserts at least that: (a) The world is made up entirely of only a few different sorts of things-the fundamental physical entities. (b) Precise, exceptionless laws govern the way in which these entities change. (c) Human perception is almost entirely deceptive: almost all perceptual qualities, e.g. qualities such as colours, sounds and smells, have no real, no objective existence. According to physicalism, only those qualities which apply to the fundamental entities, or to aggregates of fundamental entities, such as mass, position, electric charge, etc., really exist. Many eminent physicists appear to have believed in some form of physicalism. Thus Planck has written that certain '.. . considerations ... and not any logical argument. .. compel us to assume the existence of another world of reality behind the world of the senses; a world which has existence independent of man, and which can only be perceived directly through the medium of the world of the senses, and by means of certain symbols which our senses allow us to apprehend. It is as though we were compelled to contemplate a certain object in which we are interested through spectacles of whose optical properties we were entirely ignorant.' 1 Again, Einstein has written: ' Physics is an attempt conceptually to grasp reality as it is thought independently * Received I5.vii.65