Stimulated by the European project “QTEdu CSA”, within the flagship “Quantum Technologies”, a community of researchers active in the fields of quantum technologies and physics education has designed and implemented an extracurricular course on quantum physics concepts and quantum technologies applications for high school. The course, which featured eight interactive lectures, was organized online between March and May 2021 and attended by about 250 students from all over Italy. In this paper, we describe the main tenets and activities of the course. Moreover, we report on the effectiveness of the course on students’ knowledge of the basic concepts of quantum physics and students’ views about epistemic aspects and applications of quantum technologies. Results show that the designed activities were effective in improving students’ knowledge about fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics and familiarizing them with quantum technology applications.

We address some issues in colour theory, which are of relevance from an educational perspective. Spectra of emitted RGB and of transmitted CMYK colours are quantitatively processed and analysed with quite inexpensive homemade instruments, making use of smartphones as affordable digital cameras. LCD monitors and paper sheets with pigments coming from a laser printer are used to point out the basic differences between additive and subtractive colour formation. As an especially relevant aspect, we point out how it is possible to construct a simple model to explain the subtractive mixing process in terms of convolution of primary colour filters. The analysis presented in this work is particularly suited for enhancing the need for a proper understanding of the physiology of human eye–brain action in light acquisition and perception of colours.

We designed a teaching–learning sequence on rolling motion, rooted in previous research about student conceptions, and proposing an educational reconstruction strongly centred on the role of friction in different cases of rolling. A series of experiments based on video analysis is used to highlight selected key concepts and to motivate students in their exploration of the topic; and interactive simulations, which can be modified on the fly by students to model different physical situations, are used to stimulate autonomous investigation in enquiry activities. The activity sequence was designed for students on introductory physics courses and was tested with a group of student teachers. Comparisons between pre- and post-tests, and between our results and those reported in the literature, indicate that students’ understanding of rolling motion improved markedly and some typical difficulties were overcome.

In this paper we present the results of a research-based teaching-learning sequence on introductory quantum physics based on Feynman’s sum over paths approach in the Italian high school. Our study focuses on students’ understanding of two founding ideas of quantum physics, wave particle duality and the uncertainty principle. In view of recent research reporting the fragmentation of students’ mental models of quantum concepts after initial instruction, we collected and analyzed data using the assessment tools provided by knowledge integration theory. Our results on the group of $n=14$ students who performed the final test indicate that the functional explanation of wave particle duality provided by the sum over paths approach may be effective in leading students to build consistent mental models of quantum objects, and in providing them with a unified perspective on both the photon and the electron. Results on the uncertainty principle are less clear cut, as the improvements over traditional instruction appear less significant. Given the low number of students in the sample, this work should be interpreted as a case study, and we do not attempt to draw definitive conclusions. However, our study suggests that (i) the sum over paths approach may deserve more attention from researchers and educators as a possible route to introduce basic concepts of quantum physics in high school, and (ii) more research should be focused not only on the correctness of students’ mental models on individual concepts, but also on the ability of students to connect different ideas and experiments related to quantum theory in an organized whole.

In a recent paper (Amrani 2014 Eur. J. Phys. 35 045001 ), the author presented two different methods to measure the wavelength of visible lines of Balmer series from the hydrogen atomic spectrum and estimate the value of Rydberg’s constant with an error difference of a few tenths of a per cent. Here we discuss how low cost spectrometers, based on the use of either transmission or reflection diffraction gratings coupled with a commercial digital camera, can be employed with the same aim. The Rydberg’s constant values obtained with our spectrometers are R = 1.096 ± 0.007 × 10 ⁷ m ⁻¹ for the transmission grating spectrometer and R = 1.094 ± 0.005 × 10 ⁷ m ⁻¹ for the reflection spectrometer, with a difference of less than 0.30% from the accepted value of 1.097 373 × 10 ⁷ m ⁻¹ .