The aim of the present study was to explore how physicists start their research studies, how they identify their research questions and what factors influence their involvement in studying a specific research problem. The grounded theory methodology was adopted in the study by considering the qualitative nature of the research questions. The study…

The history and philosophy of science (HPS) plays a special role in education. An elective HPS course on the philosophy of scientific experimentation for young scientists and graduate students of natural science is presented. The course bears a pragmatic character, and its main aims include the development of critical thinking (CT),…

The need for an effective communication between scientific research and society is widely known to the broadest scientific community, and the sad times we are living in make it even clearer. At the same time, the need of establishing long-term structural connections between the worlds of research and that of education and scientific communication…

A one-hour guided discourse was designed to support developing the outreach communication skills of physics experts with middle school students. The participants consisted of 12 physics researchers who conduct research in the field of nanoscale science and technology (NST). The guided discourse consisted of a professional development task for…

One way to bring about change in higher education is to introduce professional development programs for higher education, however these programs have been found to be ineffective at promoting positive change for individuals and departments. To address the need for better programs, I worked on two projects: one project attempts to identify a way to…

Multi-authoring has been gaining popularity since the foundation of academic publishers. Today we observe a global trend in favor of multi-authoring. On the other hand, in certain domains, such as CERN collaborations in physics, multi-authoring has a different connotation than other domains. The number of co-authors may be above 5000, an all-time…

When the sun rose over America on July 4, 2012, the world of science had radically changed. The Higgs boson had been discovered. Mind you, the press releases were more cautious than that, with "a new particle consistent with being the Higgs boson" being the carefully constructed phrase of the day. But, make no mistake, champagne corks…

Having embraced the inclusion of evolution in the National Curriculum for primary science in England and briefly bemoaned the omission of any physics in key stage 1 (ages 5-7), it was time to focus on the biggest change, that of working scientifically. While the authors were aware of the non-statutory suggestions to study famous scientists such as…

The QuarkNet Collaboration has forged nontraditional relationships among particle physicists, high school teachers, and their students. QuarkNet centers are located at 50+ universities and labs across the United States and Puerto Rico. We provide professional development for teachers and create opportunities for teachers and students to engage in…

We repeated the historical infra-red radiation experiments performed by Melloni, to investigate why, at the end of his life, he came to the conclusion that radiation from light and heat rely on the same basic principle, what has been translated as the so called unitary formalism. In doing so, we profited from a Master thesis on heat radiation and…

As part of a longitudinal study into identity development in upper-level physics students, we used a phenomenographic research method to examine students' perceptions of what it means to be a physicist. Analysis revealed six different categories of perception of what it means to be a physicist. We found the following themes: research and its…

This article addresses the issue of gender imbalance in Finnish universities in the domain of physics as a historical and dialectical phenomenon. Drawing from the Gramscian notion of hegemony and the activity-theoretical notion of contradiction, this paper analyses gendered hegemonic and contradictory forces steering physicists' careers. This…

An analysis is presented of the varieties of activities that have been recognized in the Nobel Prizes in chemistry. Five different varieties are identified: exploration, description, synthesis, theorizing, and measurement. Prizes in chemistry have been distributed roughly equally among these five categories. The number of awards in each category…

Accidental discoveries have been of significant value in the progress of science. Although accidental discoveries are more common in pharmacology and chemistry, other branches of science have also benefited from such discoveries. While most discoveries are the result of persistent research, famous accidental discoveries provide a fascinating…

This study describes and tests a model of scientific inquiry as an evolving, organizational phenomenon. Arguments are derived from organizational ecology and evolutionary theory. The empirical subject of study is an "epistemic community" of scientists publishing on a research topic in physics: the string theoretic concept of…