Daniel Badagnani

The perceptions that young people have of science and technology, their teaching, and their potential as a life option are decisive both for the choice of related degree programs and for not dropping out of university. In Argentina, the number of graduates in these areas is well below what is needed for national development goals. Knowing those perceptions is important for planning enrollment, retention, and graduation policies. This paper presents data on such perceptions in high school students from Hurlingham, collected through the ROSE questionnaire. The results, in general terms, only differ in specific aspects from those found in other countries. In particular, they present a positive view of science and technology, although with some criticisms, and also a social commitment attitude. This image contrasts with the little enthusiasm and criticism towards school science.

This article recounts our experience adapting the Physics lecturing to virtual modality at Instituto de Ciencias Polares, Universidad Nacional de Tierra del Fuego (Argentina) due to the covid-19 pandemics in the years 2020 and 2021. Our goal was preserving the essence of the in-person modality: interactive engagement focusing on group work and debates, so virtuality posed a significant challenge. To face it, we assembled an interdisciplinary team and the agile methodology was adopted, complementing our usual implementation of systematic innovation. We suggest that from combining the in-person modality with tools acquired during confinement a more robust Physics course will arise, with a far more consistent formative evaluation scheme.

We use force concept inventory (FCI) data to probe the consistency of commonsense physics as a knowledge system. The source of this data is the administration of the FCI to first-year science university students. Data quality was checked using item response theory and studying answer distributions for each question. We find apparently paradoxical results: depending on how the data is analysed, answers seem highly systematic or almost random-like. These results are compatible with others found in the literature and can be construed as arising either from a coherent knowledge system or from knowledge in pieces. We hypothesise as a possible source of this apparent contradiction that predictions and explanations use different resources: the former would use reflex, low-cost cognitive resources while the latter would involve conceptualisations. We show that the articulation of both resources may be crucial for expert thinking productivity (the ability to apply a theory to novel situations). We sketch some consequences of the proposed structure of commonsense thinking for teaching and further research.

In this paper we implement for the first time the use of a {\pi}N{\Delta}(1232) vertex interaction containing both first and second order derivative terms, as required by renormalization considerations. As as was previously shown both interactions present formal problems, but can be implemented pertubatively. We put an end point to the discussion of which type of interaction is the apropriate one: both the usual pi-derivative and the "spin 3/2" gauge invariant that include also a derivative in the {\Delta} field should be included in amplitude calculations. We show that when working within a tree level approach the description of total {\pi}N{\Delta} scattering in the different channels is improved.

We show a device with which, apparently, information (in the form of a "slash-dot" code) is instantly transmitted via Bell state collapse, over arbitrary distance. We show then why the device does not actually work, and discuss about the "no Bell telephone" statement. We discuss also about the troublesome relationship between the Copenhagen interpretation and special relativity. In particular, we advocate the interpretation that the "state space" cannot be a description of the state of the object studied alone, but that the observer is inextricably involved even if no measurement is taking place.

We perform the Dirac quantization of Rarita–Schwinger fields interacting with a spinor and the first derivative of a pseudoscalar field. We achieve the calculations for two forms of this interaction: first we review the conventional coupling of lowest derivative order, reproducing the well known inconsistencies in its anticommutator algebra. Then, we perform the analysis on the next order term popularly known as ‘spin-3/2 gauge invariant interaction’, which is claimed to be free of these inconsistencies. Nevertheless we find that the direct application of the Dirac formalism leads to inconsistencies in complete analogy to the previous case. This is of high relevance in the particle phenomenology field, where these interactions are used to interpret experimental data involving Δ ( 1232 ) resonances.