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During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, Italian schools and Universities were closed. In this scenario, teachers, in order to continue their work, had to manage the didactics by themselves, carrying out Distance Learning, thanks to the technology support. Nevertheless, teachers had some methodological and technical difficulties. This situation required the replanning of some physics contents, trying to include laboratory activities, too. A teachers’ training was organized in order to support the teachers both for effective and meaningful use of ICT and to carry out some laboratory activities in Distance Learning mode. The training aimed to investigate leading technologies relevant to physics teaching, the competencies that a physics teacher has to acquire to use digital technologies, and the effective approaches to develop these competencies. The course was organized into four webinars, timing 10 hours. Teachers became confident with ICT for communication, sharing, and documentation. Moreover, teachers approached the IBSE methodology, as modified by adding a further E-laboratory phase to the 5E cycle, promoted by Bybee, by planning a learning chunk, including a laboratory activity in synchronous e-learning mode. 20 High School Physics teachers were involved in the training.

The history of geometry teaching in Italy, in the period from the final years of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century, is analysed here, taking into account the influence of both school reforms and the “New geometry of the triangle”, first introduced in France in 1873. Specifically, we refer to some theorems, about Cevian and orthic triangles, which may be included in the “New geometry of the triangle”, although they have been discovered in Italy before 1873. Some Italian booklets and textbooks have been analysed, to show the influence of these factors on the geometric teaching. Keywords: geometry teaching, New geometry of the triangle, Ceva’s theorem, orthic triangles, Cevian quadrilaterals, Fagnano’s problem

The optical properties of a compact disc (CD) under “skimming” light rays have been analyzed. We have noticed that a clear green line can be detected when the disc is irradiated with light rays coming from a lamp in such a way that only those skimming the CD, held horizontally, are selected. We provide a physical interpretation of this phenomenon on the basis of elementary optics concepts. Extension of these concepts to digital versatile discs (DVDs) is given.

Physics’ curricula of Italian Scientific High Schools in the last years have been enhanced by the introduction of Quantum Mechanics and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). Education monitoring reveals that last year’s students are experiencing many issues in learning in their second language (L2) and advanced and counter-intuitive contents. Our experiment is aimed at understanding and then overcoming those problems using educational methodologies based on social aspects. Thanks to the Internet, a communicative style can be exploited where teachers could keep teaching, playing the role of semiotic mediators. Multimedia and simulations broadly available in MOOCS suggested a flipped classroom approach coping with the project of CLIL lessons. In our experience two classrooms of students were selected, starting from very similar performances and skills. The first one was taught with traditional lectures and tests; the second one, instead, attended to experimental lessons. Students could share their ideas and learning supports through a Facebook group, a blog, virtual classrooms and a website. Nevertheless, at the end of the experience an eTwinning exchange was planned, to spread the experiment towards foreign schools. The outcomes of the tests performed on the students were analysed and unexpected results were drawn. An extension to larger numbers of students, the introduction of different methodologies and the research about different topics in Physics could potentially develop this research.

The problem of the discharge time of a cylindrical bucket with a hole in the bottom is solved by means of Bernoulli's equation for non-steady flow. Comparison of the results with experiment and with a simplified analysis using Torricelli's law is made. The measurements were made by high-school students in a laboratory session under guidance of instructors. It is noted that, for large ratios between the radius R of the cylinder and the radius r of the hole, the simple formula for the discharge time of a leaking bucket found by means of Torricelli's law can be used to interpret the experimental results, provided effective parameters for the model are defined.