Physics Professor at Sapienza Università di Roma
Affiliated to: CERN, INFN, AAPT, ICOM, SIF
I work for the CMS experiment at CERN and for the PADME experiment at LNF. I contributed to the design and the building of the e.m. calorimeter of the CMS experiment, who dsicovered the Higgs boson in 2012.
My activity is now focused on physics education.
- ''Fondamenti di Fisica'', by J. Walker, is the italian edition of a physics textbook by Walker. I reviewed it added videolectures about home made physics experiments using Arduino or smartphones. In the new italian edition, in particular, I paid much attention to safety aspects and gender equality.
- ''Fisica con Arduino'', Zanichelli, is a textbook for schools in which I describes simple experiments to be done with Arduino.
- ''Physics experiments with Arduino and smartphones'', published by Springer, is a university textbook about laboratory practice, statistical data analysis and introduces to python programming.
My interests are in the following topics.
- Quantum mechanics (QM): a new kind of introduction, overcoming the traditional one as the consequence of a crisis of classical mechanics. In my view, QM can be introduced as a natural extension of classical mechanics, provided few classical concepts are appropriately taught.
- Coding: introducing coding in physics education is a must. I consider C-language as very effective in coding education. On the other hand Python appears simpler and more flexible. Merging coding and experimental activities is fundamental.
- Physics, mathematics and art relationships.