Reviews problems and decisions faced in the development of the Nuffield Physics advanced level course. (SL)

Provides an overview of the programing language PROLOG and highlights its educational uses. Explains how PROLOG serves as a model of representing commonsense understandings of motion. Identifies problem areas and proposes future tasks with the program. (ML)

Presents a system that permits students to engage directly in the process of modelling and to learn some important lessons about models and classes of models. The system described currently runs on RML 380Z and 480Z, Apple II and IIe, and BBC model B microcomputers. (JN)

Describes the way in which quantum ideas are incorporated into the Nuffield advanced physics course. Quantum theory is presented as an enormous intellectual leap to be excited by, puzzled over and thought about, not as a set of results and equations to be packed away in the mind. (Author/MLH)

The first phase of an evaluation of the new AS/A-level course "Advancing Physics," sponsored by the Institute of Physics, is now complete. It shows that the course has achieved very high satisfaction ratings from teachers of the course, and that a majority of these teachers see it as achieving its main aims. The first phase of the…

"Soft matter" is a lively current field of research, looking at fundamental theoretical questions about the structure and behaviour of complex forms of matter, and at very practical problems of, for example, improving the performance of glues or the texture of ice cream. Foodstuffs provide an excellent way in to this modern topic, which lies on…

This article shows how relativity can be introduced in four stages, each building on those before it, but the teacher can choose to stop after whichever stage he/she believes the pupils are capable of tackling.

Who owns a new science course once it has been developed? If teachers teach a course in their own way, does this transformation improve or deform it? The development of "Advancing Physics" provokes some fresh thought about these questions. (Author/MM)

Looks at opportunities and needs within the teaching of physics at the secondary level to develop ideas of chance, and to set these within a discussion of some of the problems of what the subject should be like at this level. (Author/GA)