New technologies (smartphones, Arduino, …) offer the opportunity to rethink how to teach experimental physics. These new opportunities are not so much due to the digital side of these tools as their versatility, either because of their low cost or because of their ubiquity among students. It is thus possible to leave more autonomy to the students, or even to take the experiment out of the classroom.

The OpenTP.fr website comes from a teaching program at Paris-Saclay University. Drawing inspiration from the practices of design schools or art schools, this course proposes physicist students to make their own Students’ Lab. After an initiation in the form of challenges and games, they have to design and build their experimental setup, then analyze the results, in five days. It is an initiation close to the research process, which renews the vision that students have of experimental physics: more creative but also riskier and with unexpected outcomes!

This site allows the sharing of original educational materials (the sheets) and the sharing of physics projects led by students (tutorials), so that a community of users can develop around these new approaches of physics.

credits

All content on this site may be freely used under the terms of the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license.

The BD tutorials are the result of a collaboration between Margaux Khalil (DSAA of Scientific Illustration Design of Estienne school), Julien Bobroff and Frédéric Bouquet (Physics Reimagined, Paris-Sud University).

It is also based on students’ labs of the Magistère de Physique Fondamentale d’Orsay (University Paris-Sud). It has benefited from the support of the “Physique Autrement” Chair, supported by the Paris-Sud Foundation and supported by the Air Liquide Group, and also the support of IDEX Paris-Saclay under the “Innovative Licenses” APP.

The Arduino sheets were developed by Marine Joumard, illustrator from the Ecole Estienne, in collaboration with the group “Physics Reimagined” (LPS, Paris-Sud University) and the CNRS. We have the support of IDEX Paris-Saclay under the “Transformez” APP.

Many people have participated to this project: Claire Marrache, Fabrice Bert, Miguel Monteverde, Catherine Even, Anniina Salonen, Charis Quay, Meydi Ferier, Bertrand Pilette, Jean-Marie Fischbach, Patrick Puzo, Laurence Maurines, Magali Gallezot-Fuchs, Fabienne Bernard, Cyril Dauphin, Kensuke Kobayashi, Motoaki Bamba, Giovanni Organtini, students of le magistère de physique fondamentale at Paris-Sud University and students of the Institut Villebon-Georges Charpak.

Website creation: DaFox

The free software fritzing was used to create circuit images.