Abstract
It is common to praise big historical events in physics especially on the occasion of their centennial. It is not common, however, that the contribution to modern physics is relevant to the basic physics curriculum of any school. This happened to be the case of principle of equivalence and its exact confirmation provided by Roland von Eötvös a century ago (1909), which projected to the cardinal change in the concept of weight as different from the gravitational force. This essay briefly depicts the history of the concept of weight-gravity and its impact on physics teaching in regular school classes. The controversy of gravity versus gravitation introduces to the learners the major feature of physics nature—its commitment to the operational definition of physics concepts. What makes the history of weight especially interesting is that the debate on weight definition in physics teaching is not closed and, in fact, splits the community of physics educators around the globe into two groups: Newtonians and Einsteinians. This makes our life interesting and us alive. We suggest a solution.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Challenges in Physics Education |
| Publisher | Springer Nature |
| Pages | 109-124 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2021 |
Publication series
| Name | Challenges in Physics Education |
|---|---|
| ISSN (Print) | 2662-8422 |
| ISSN (Electronic) | 2662-8430 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
Keywords
- Concept definition
- Gravitation
- Gravity
- Weight