University of Pavia, Department of Physics “Alessandro Volta”, History and Education of Science Section
The Physics Department's History and Didactics Group of the Pavia University began, in the late seventies, to research aspects of knowledge of the History of Science and scientific education, and to underline the role the former could play in the latter. Halfway through the eighties, the Group linked contents and methodology to digital technology. Research has been following four lines:
History of Science
The research has focussed on analysing case studies in the History of Physics. Especial attention has been paid to the relationship between strictly scientific ideas and the philosophical thinking of scientists, on the one hand; on the other, the connection between scientific concepts and the particular mathematical shape they take.
Historical and epistemological aspects have been gone into in the course of research. This has encouraged constant interdisciplinary up dating and the formulation of some rather useful methodology.
The Primary Sources
Particular attention has been paid to restoring and exploiting primary sources, such as the collection of scientific apparatus and books of the Pavia University.
Science Education and Digital Technology
Hypertext technologies can change epistemological and historical methodologies into teaching instruments. The resulting picture of science has met with considerable success. At one click of a mouse you can pass from a normal textbook to an advanced one, an original memo, the biographies of authors and their backgrounds, to root sources and research programmes and finally the construction of conceptual maps, summarising paths taken, using some of the principles, models, and mathematical and experimental structures. All this has shown Physics in a new light, which has been of great use particularly to secondary school teachers. Being careful not to overload them with information, multimedia applications have been researched and developed, particularly scientific experiment simulations and the use of two- and three-dimensional presentations and animations to illustrate principles of Physics or how instruments work. A number of websites, CD-ROMs and DVDs have been published.
http://www.unipv.it/
Brief biographical notes of the members of the research team:
Fabio Bevilacqua
Fabio Bevilacqua has obtained a ph. D. in history and philosophy of science at the Cambridge University on 1984 with a thesis on the principle of energy conservation. He has the chair of History of Science at Sciences Faculty in Pavia University. From 1997 to 2000 he teached Education Technologies. On 1981 he has contributed to create the Italian Histoty of Physics Group of CNR, taking the secretary during ten years. On 1986 he founded the EPS Interdivis Group of History of Physics.
Lidia Falomo
Lidia Falomo, graduated in Physics, is researcher at the Physics Department "A. Volta" at Pavia University, where she gives a course of "Educational Tecnologies in Physics Teaching". Since 1992 she is in charge of "A.Volta" Department's Educational Tecnology Laboratory. Her research activity concerns with the use of the hypermedia technologies and of the history of physics in relation to both a new approach to Science Education (in particular, physics teaching) and a new way of diffusion of scientific culture (in particulary, a project of informatization of the scientific collections, instruments and library heritage of the Pavia University).
Lucio Fregonese
Lucio Fregonese is currently curator of the Museum for the History of the University of Pavia, containing two important sections of history of physics (Volta) and history of medicine (Scarpa, Golgi). His main scientific interests are centred on eighteenth-century physics and natural philosophy, with a special focus on the theories and instruments of Alessandro Volta. In the series “I grandi della Scienza”, published by the Italian edition of “Scientific American”, he has proposed (1999) a new interpretation and contextualisation of Volta’s electrical programme, also in connection with the various instruments he invented. In the recent collective volume “Gli strumenti di Alessandro Volta” (Milano: Hoepli 2002), he has considered again all the numerous instruments invented by Volta in relation to his theoretical ideas. He has done research also on Coulomb and his torsion balance, on Laplace’s molecular physics and on Ohm’s investigations on electrical conduction. He is one of the editors of the series “Nuova Voltiana” (already 5 numbers) dedicated to studies on Volta and his times, with contributions of important historians of science. He is currently doing research on nineteenth-century electrostatic theories and instruments.
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