The Physics Teacher has published over the years many inspiring papers with an historical slant and we agree with Thomas B. Greenslade, who recently wrote that teaching physics is about "integrating physics with human culture.… if we are going to leave a lasting impact on our students, we should do more than teach them pure physics."…

George M. Hopkins (1842-1902) wrote a series of articles on demonstrating physical phenomena in the "Scientific American" during the last years of the 19th century. These were collected in a book, "Experimental Science," that was first published in 1890, with revisions in 1892 and 1902. It must have been well received, for the…

In an earlier article I argued that much of what used to be called "modern physics" stems from the intersection of two earlier technologies: high vacuum and high voltage. In this article I will discuss the induction coil, invented in the 1830s, reinvented in the second half of the 19th century, and still used today to produce the high…

It is well known that Newton's work on mechanics depended in a crucial way on the previous observations of Galileo. The key insight of Galileo was that one can analyze the motion of bodies using experiments and mathematical equations. One experimental observation that roughly emerges from this work in modern terms is that two objects of different…

The theory of the Big Bang is accepted nearly universally among the scientific community. However, there is a small cadre of individuals who dispute this consensus and they point to a handful of datums that don't fit into the picture. One such datum is the existence of a star with an age reported to be older than the cosmos itself. This star is…

Most physics teachers have observed the majestic swings of a monumental pendulum at a science museum and have watched long enough to see the plane of oscillation slowly changing direction as Earth turns. The purpose of Don Olson's article is to describe visits to Paris sites related to Jean Bernard Léon Foucault (1819-1868), with a special focus…

A popular introductory physics laboratory experiment is one focusing on Snell's law. This is straightforward to complete with lasers and prisms, but here we present an alternative version that guides the students through some of the major historical developments, recreating and analyzing significant experiments. The discovery of Snell's law has a…

The history of particle physics can be considered nothing less than a huge triumph for science. Over the course of a little more than a century of effort, our understanding of the world of atomic and subatomic physics went from a vague understanding of atoms, to one that is much more detailed. Early in this hundred-year-long period, we learned…

In high school, and also in introductory physics courses in higher levels of schooling, the law of universal gravitation of planets is introduced by postulating Johannes Kepler's three laws, and later Isaac Newton's law of the inverse of the square of the distance to the Sun. The justification of the laws is only achieved in advanced courses in…

Old physics textbooks give us a great opportunity to learn about the history of science and rediscover different methods to teach physics to our students. There are many disused and forgotten experiments in them, but these can still be very useful to affirm and understand physics. This is the case of an instrument used in the 19th century to…

The Wright brothers, Wilbur and Orville, are often depicted as lone geniuses, secretly assembling the first successful powered aircraft far from civilization at Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. There is a germ of truth in the popular story, but only a germ. The brothers succeeded while so many other experimenters failed not because…

We describe an educational activity that can be completed with mobile media devices in order to understand the working principle of a pair of tuning forks, from the Historical Collection of Physics Instruments of the University of Palermo, and how they were used to explain acoustic interference and beats with the Lissajous optical method. This…

In the modern and exciting world of particle physics, in which scientists talk of Higgs bosons and supersymmetry, it would be natural for someone to dismiss the common proton as a particle too pedestrian to be interesting. Yet in the centennial year of the announcement of its discovery, studies of the humble nucleus of the hydrogen atom continue…

In 2018, we celebrated the sesquicentennial birthday of Robert A. Millikan, a Nobel laureate in physics who worked among the greats such as Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein. His name, however, is perhaps not as widely known. He was born in 1868 in Morrison, Illinois, and moved with his family to the small town of Maquoketa, Iowa, at age nine. It was…

Some of you may remember the 1979 television series "Connections" that was written and narrated by James Burke, a British science writer. Burke's technique was to choose a number of seemingly unrelated ideas and show how they led to developments in science and technology. This is an enjoyable business, even if some of the connections…