Pedagogy and the Practice of Science

Pedagogy and the Practice of Science
Author: David Kaiser
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2005
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780262112888
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Studies examining the ways in which the training of engineers and scientists shapes their research strategies and scientific identities.

Drawing Theories Apart

Drawing Theories Apart
Author: David Kaiser
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2009-11-15
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0226422658
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Winner of the 2007 Pfizer Prize from the History of Science Society. Feynman diagrams have revolutionized nearly every aspect of theoretical physics since the middle of the twentieth century. Introduced by the American physicist Richard Feynman (1918-88) soon after World War II as a means of simplifying lengthy calculations in quantum electrodynamics, they soon gained adherents in many branches of the discipline. Yet as new physicists adopted the tiny line drawings, they also adapted the diagrams and introduced their own interpretations. Drawing Theories Apart traces how generations of young theorists learned to frame their research in terms of the diagrams—and how both the diagrams and their users were molded in the process. Drawing on rich archival materials, interviews, and more than five hundred scientific articles from the period, Drawing Theories Apart uses the Feynman diagrams as a means to explore the development of American postwar physics. By focusing on the ways young physicists learned new calculational skills, David Kaiser frames his story around the crafting and stabilizing of the basic tools in the physicist's kit—thus offering the first book to follow the diagrams once they left Feynman's hands and entered the physics vernacular.

The Challenging Questions

The Challenging Questions
Author: Antonino Zichichi
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 470
Release: 2013-11-21
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1461538289
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During July-August 1989. a group of 75 physicists from 52 laboratories in 16 countries met in Erice for the 27th Course of the International School of Subnuclear Physics. The countries represented were: Austria. Bulgaria. Canada. China. Denmark. France. the Federal Republic of Germany. Hungary. India. Italy. Pakistan. Poland. Switzerland. United Kingdom. and the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States of America. The School was sponsored by the European Physical Society (EPS). the Italian Ministry of Education (MPI). the Italian Ministry of Scientific and Technological Research (MRST). the Sicilian Regional Government (ERS). and the Weizmann Institute of Science. In addition to some crucial problems in the Superworld Theory. developed by S. Ferrara and L. Hall. the School was focused on the most advanced topics which have attracted our attention during the last year. These are of a phenomenological nature: the problem of the spin inside the proton (G. Altarelli). some crucial QCD tests (R. Baldini-Celio and S. Brodsky). the jet phenomenology as predicted by QCD (Y. Dokshitzer); and of basic (therefore by far more difficult to solve) value. such as the understanding of the fundamental constants of Nature (G. Veneziano) and the new ideas on the cosmological constant (A. Stominger and G. Veneziano).