The Physics of Everyday Life Toolbox for Basic Physics Courses

The Physics of Everyday Life (PEL) teaching environment is illustrated, developed since 2007 at the University of Pisa in physics courses for life-sciences and for physicists considering a future career in school teaching. Sourcing inspiration from How things work by Lou Bloomfield, PEL aims at explicitly restoring the functional process of scientific thinking, with observation and creation of hypotheses preceding their formalization for subsequent experimental verification, so that intuition is first educated through classroom demonstrations. The early educational project is illustrated along with its adaptations to different contexts, including high-school situated environments, teachers training, and outreach activities. Then, the evolution of the PEL environment is focused, aimed at enhancing its impact and overturning weak points. This amounts to the Street-Physics Toolbox (SPT), conceived just before the pandemic in the form of 60 video-pills exhausting the full physics program, and resulted to be of significant utility within the perimeter of distance teaching. Implementation examples in real different context are discussed, also in relationship with the general Inquired-Based Learning cycle and of flipped-classroom approaches. Future perspectives include a systematic assessment of the PEL and SPT environment and extending contents for quantum physics and technologies education.