Although synchronization effects play an important role in many areas of basic and applied science, their treatment in undergraduate physics courses requires more attention. Based on acoustic experiments with a driven organ pipe, the article proposes analytical, numerical and qualitative approaches to this universal phenomenon, suitable for introductory teaching. The Adler equation is developed, a first-order nonlinear differential equation describing the phase dynamics of driven self-sustained oscillations in the weak coupling limit. Analytical solutions, intuitive mechanical analogues and properties of the resulting comb spectra are discussed. The underlying phase model is paradigmatic for synchronization-based self-organization phenomena in a wide range of fields, from physics and engineering to life and social sciences.

This review presents a sequence of exemplary experience-based encounters with self-organizing systems on different levels of difficulty. Based on hands-on experiments and creative modeling it provides a viable educational road to build up a deeper understanding of self-organization principles and their comprehensive nature. Theories of self-organization describe how patterns, structures and new types of behavior emerge in energetically open systems, resulting from the local interaction of many components. As an external control instance is missing, the underlying philosophy is counterintuitive to our habits of causal thinking. This thematic and conceptual framework impacts on many STEM domains and presents a blueprint for modeling emergent structures and complex functions in natural and technological systems. It reveals unifying principles that can help in reducing, in structuring and, finally, in understanding and controlling the emerging complexity. An overview across diverse STEM domains highlights the role of this overarching concept. This cross-disciplinary approach can help in improving the dialogue and the knowledge exchange between the individual fields. Moreover, in a self-referential fashion, the modeling of self-organization provides us with fresh perspectives to reflect our own creative processes.

As a reaction to the growing economical, ecological and societal demands on education innumerous efforts and programs have been initiated throughout the educational chain to improve the quality of teaching and learning in the STEM field. On that background we sketch a framework to foster creative engagement in learning to promote scientific inquiry and modeling processes. In the theoretical part the article presents a dualistic perspective on the grounding of creative cognition in concrete experience, highlighting the productive and reflexive interplay of procedural and conceptual knowing. Their entanglement is pivotal to successful knowledge construction and application in science and technology. The ‘mechanics’ of creativity is elaborated exemplarily in a project based learning sequence that starts from investigating and modeling elastic forces as a basic paradigm of creative model construction. The creative part refers to conceptual expansions of the elastic spring model that assist in modeling emergent mechanical properties in hard and soft condensed matter. With additional moderate instructional input this knowledge is productive in creating basic models of the self-organized dynamics of biomolecular systems that orchestrate life at the cellular level. The sequence demonstrates how the interplay of hands-on experience and conceptual modeling can promote near and far transfer.

Physik in unserer ZeitVolume 46, Issue 1 p. 48-48 Bücher Nanotechnology in a Nutshell. From Simple to Complex Systems. Von Christian Ngô und Marcel Van de Voorde. Manfred Euler, Manfred Euler GrünbergSearch for more papers by this author Manfred Euler, Manfred Euler GrünbergSearch for more papers by this author First published: 05 January 2015 https://doi.org/10.1002/piuz.201590017AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume46, Issue1Januar 2015Pages 48-48 RelatedInformation

CHEMKONVolume 21, Issue 3 p. 107-107 InhaltsverzeichnisFree Access Inhaltsverzeichnis: CHEMKON 3/2014 First published: 21 July 2014 https://doi.org/10.1002/ckon.201490005AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume21, Issue3Juli 2014Pages 107-107 RelatedInformation

In the last decade out-of-school laboratories were established to promote scientific educational processes. Meanwhile, they contribute to the scientific and technological education process. Initially, these learning laboratories were mainly set up from a science point of view to promote using scientific approaches. The focus, however, has now shifted to economic issues and career orientation. The industry-oriented lab Baylab plastics has extended scientific and technical out-of-school learning experiences with potentials, perspectives and the demands of an industrial company. Successful changes to the image of physics and chemistry as well as positive effects on career orientation have been achieved.

Society becomes increasingly dependent on photonics technologies; however there is an alarming lack of technological awareness among secondary school students. They associate photonics with experiments and components in the class room that seem to bear little relevance to their daily life. The Rocard Report [5] highlights the need for fostering students’ scientific skills and technological awareness and identifies inquiry based learning (IBL) as a means to achieve this. Students need to actively do science rather than be silent spectators. The ‘Photonics Explorer’ kit was developed as an EU funded project to equip teachers, free-of-charge, with educational material designed to excite, engage and educate European secondary school students using guided inquiry based learning techniques. Students put together their own experiments using up-to-date versatile components, critically interpret results and relate the conclusions to relevant applications in their daily life. They work hands-on with the material, thus developing and honing their scientific and analytical skills that are otherwise latent in a typical class room situation. A qualitative and quantitative study of the impact of the kit in the classroom was undertaken with 50 kits tested in 7 EU countries with over 1500 students in the local language. This paper reports on the results of the EU wide field tests that show the positive impact of the kit in raising the self-efficacy, scientific skills and interest in science among students and the effectiveness of the kit in implementing IBL strategies in classrooms across EU.

In the last decade out-of-school laboratories were established to promote scientific educational processes. Meanwhile, they contribute to the scientific and technological education process. Initially, these learning laboratories were mainly set up from a science point of view to promote using scientific approaches. The focus, however, has now shifted to economic issues and career orientation. The industry-oriented lab Baylab plastics has extended scientific and technical out-of-school learning experiences with potentials, perspectives and the demands of an industrial company. Successful changes to the image of physics and chemistry as well as positive effects on career orientation have been achieved.

Anders als bei den großen technologischen Revolutionen der Vergangenheit sind es heute eher die kreativen Ideen im Kleinen, die bedeutsame Innovationen vorantreiben. Mit Techniken der Mikrostrukturierung lassen sich Systeme im Mikrometer-Bereich mit vielfältigen elektronischen, mechanischen, optischen oder fluidischen Funktionen schaffen. In der Nanotechnologie erreicht die Miniaturisierung ihre molekulare und atomare Grenze. Während Mikrosysteme noch analog zu geeignet verkleinerten klassischen Makrosystemen arbeiten, kommt es auf der Nanometer-Skala vor allem aufgrund quantenmechanischer Effekte zu neuen Eigenschaften, die nunmehr technologisch erschlossen werden. Die Nanowissenschaft vereinigt Grundlagen aus Physik, Chemie und Biologie. Mit Erkenntnissen aus der Nanowelt lassen sich viele Technologien verbessern und verlässlicher, effizienter und ressourcenschonender gestalten. Die Vermittlung nanotechnologischerInhalte im Unterricht birgt die große Chance ein Technikfeld zu behandeln, das bei den Schülern positiv besetzt ist und durch das Grundlagen für einen beruflichen Werdegang in der Technik und den Ingenieurwissenschaften gelegt werden können.

In the European educational context, reports by expert groups have identified the necessity of a renewed pedagogy in schools to overcome deficits in science and mathematics teaching and to raise the standards of scientific and mathematical literacy. Inquiry-based learning (IBL) is considered the method of choice. However, it remains open to what extent IBL is actually used in day-to-day teaching. In the study presented here we elaborate—from the perspective of teachers—the current status of IBL in day-to-day teaching. Further, we explore what problems teachers anticipate when implementing IBL. In order to gain insight into the wide spectrum of practices in mathematics and science teaching in relation to IBL, a baseline study using teacher questionnaires was carried out in the 12 participating countries. We present selected results from this study that for the first time provides an overview of teachers’ beliefs and their reports on the current use of IBL practices in a European context. The results facilitate a cross-cultural comparison on the potentials and challenges of implementing IBL from the perspective of practicing teachers. Furthermore, the study reveals considerable differences between the teaching of mathematics and science subjects. The findings of the baseline study can serve as a reference line against which the impact of interventions to improve the quality of teaching and learning can be evaluated.

A hands-on model of scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) is presented. It uses near-field imaging with sound and computer assisted visualization to create acoustic mappings of resonator arrangements. Due to the (partial) analogy of matter and sound waves the images closely resemble STM scans of atoms. Moreover, the method can be extended to build an acoustic analogue of a quantum corral. The acoustic models foster reflections about the nature of STM images and elucidate the productive tension of imaging and imagining matter at the nanoscale.

AbstractDer Beitrag stellt akustische Modelle der Rastertunnelmikroskopie vor. Diese nutzen Schallwellen und computergenerierte Visualisierungen zur Abbildung akustischer Systeme. Quantenanalogien veranschaulichen abstrakte Konzepte wie den Tunneleffekt und die Zustandsdichten von Elektronen. Die Experimente vermitteln einen praktischen, an Alltagserfahrungen orientierten Zugang zu Konzepten sowie Mess‐ und Visualisierungsmethoden der Nanowissenschaft. Sie demonstrieren auch, wie Nahfeldabbildungen die Beugungsgrenze der konventionellen Mikroskopie überwinden können.

On the level of European education policy, inquiry-based teaching and learning is met with high expectations to raise the standards of mathematical and scientific literacy. It is considered the method of choice to increase students’ interest as well as their achievement. Even though inquiry-based learning (IBL) is widely accepted as a means of improving education, there is still no common understanding that connects the various approaches. This chapter gives an overview of numerous IBL conceptions. In order to study the potentials and challenges of implementing IBL on a European scale, an empirically based overview of the existing situation in selected European countries is presented. It is based on data from the PRIMAS baseline study which investigates the issues of intensifying IBL from the perspective of mathematics and science teachers. The baseline data are analysed with respect to subject-specific effects and differences in the various teaching cultures across Europe. Additionally, findings from the COMPASS project are discussed that demonstrate the challenges of renewing pedagogy in actual teaching practice.

The ‘Photonics Explorer’ is a unique intra-curricular optics kit designed to engage, excite and educate secondary school students about the fascination of working with light – hands-on, in their own classrooms. Developed with a pan European collaboration of experts, the kit equips teachers with class sets of experimental material provided within a supporting didactic framework, distributed in conjunction with teacher training courses. The material has been specifically designed to integrate into European science curricula. Each kit contains robust and versatile components sufficient for a class of 25-30 students to work in groups of 2-3. The didactic content is based on guided inquiry-based learning (IBL) techniques with a strong emphasis on hands-on experiments, team work and relating abstract concepts to real world applications. The content has been developed in conjunction with over 30 teachers and experts in pedagogy to ensure high quality and ease of integration. It is currently available in 7 European languages. The Photonics Explorer allows students not only to hone their essential scientific skills but also to really work as scientists and engineers in the classroom. Thus, it aims to encourage more young people to pursue scientific careers and avert the imminent lack of scientific workforce in Europe. 50 Photonics Explorer kits have been successfully tested in 7 European countries with over 1500 secondary school students. The positive impact of the kit in the classroom has been qualitatively and quantitatively evaluated. A non-profit organisation, EYESTvzw [Excite Youth for Engineering Science and Technology], is responsible for the large scale distribution of the Photonics Explorer.

The invention of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) 30 years ago opened up a visual window to the nano-world and sparked off a bunch of new methods for investigating and controlling matter and its transformations at the atomic and molecular level.1 However, an adequate theoretical understanding of the method is demanding; STM images can be considered quantum theory condensed into a pictorial representation. A hands-on model is presented for demonstrating the imaging principles in introductory teaching. It uses sound waves and computer visualization to create mappings of acoustic resonators. The macroscopic simile is made possible by quantum-classical analogies between matter and sound waves. Grounding STM in acoustic experience may help to make the underlying quantum concepts such as tunneling less abstract to students.