Alfonso D'Ambrosio
Istituto Istruzione Superiore J.F. KENNEDY , Monselice (Pd), Italy
Alfonso D'Ambrosio teaches Mathematics and Physics. He is a physicist and loves to use all new technology in his teaching, such as smartphones, tablets, virtual classrooms, and various math and physics apps. The age of his students ranges from 14 to 19 years.
Alfonso is an active use of ISE resources and participates regularly in ISE activities in Italy. He also submitted an entry to the 2014-2015 Learning with Light competition, which was considered to be one of the top 5 entries to the competition by the judges. As a finalist, Alfonso took part in the Science on Stage festival in London on 17-20 June 2015 where the overall winner of the competition was announced.
Learning with Light competition entry
Alfonso's entry to the competition is called "An IBSE Approach to General Relativity, Marble Orbits on a Warping Spandex Universe'?.Describing his entry Alfonso says:
With my class, we decided to investigate mathematical or experimental gravity as part of the Inspiring Science Education Competition 2015. The Newtonian Gravitational model was researched by using the ISE Celestia tool. In the end, they realised a Spandex Universe, a curved 2D space that has a new fascinating Gravitation Model, General Relativity.
We chose a project in accordance with the physics curriculum in our country. Specific knowledge has been required during the project. It covered celestial orbits, Kepler's and Newton's laws, time and space relativity, gravitational forces, elasticity force, General Relativity, tidal force, gravitational waves and gravitational lensing. At fist the approach intimidated the students, but after the objective to build an own real experiment , they became more enthusiastic and even took initiatives, such as the Facebook Group 'Fisica laboratorio povero Kennedy', Skype talking, video analysis.
Here are some of the resources Antonio used in her entry:
- http://portal.discoverthecosmos.eu/node/118273
- http://portal.opendiscoveryspace.eu/edu-object/stellar-mass-black-holes-part-2-frontiers-and-controversies-astrophysics-57627
- http://portal.opendiscoveryspace.eu/edu-object/journey-black-hole-learning-cycle-281662
- http://portal.opendiscoveryspace.eu/content/celestia-676927
You can find out more about Alfonso's entry here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=26&v=QaG4s4PvHHA
