The project

This guide was implemented within the project O.R.A. (Observation-Reflection- Learning), financed by the Italian Ministry of Education and described on the website http://ora.infm.it.
The hypermedia is part of a teaching proposal prepared at the University of Pavia for introducing hydrostatics in secondary school (age of students: 13-15 years). This proposal is based on a strategy that suggests an integrated use of the hypermedia and simple experiments in the classroom. Worksheets for the experimental activity are available on the website of the project ORA.

The approach proposed for the study of hydrostatics presents the basic principles in an order different from the traditional one. The starting point is the Pascal's principle, which explains the fundamental properties of a liquid at rest. It paves the way for studying the behaviour of a liquid under the action of gravity and deriving Stevin's law. Finally, Archimedes' law is presented as a consequence of Stevin's law and of the fundamental properties of liquids expressed by the Pascal principle. This sequence, different from the historical one (Archimedes', Stevin's, Pascal's), allows students to connect properly the three principles and to master the fundamentals of hydrostatics.

Main objective of the hypermedia is helping students reflect on experimental activity and favouring a formalization process that leads them to build a correct representation of pressure in a liquid at rest.

The system has been presented ad the 7th Workshop on Multimedia in Physics Teaching and Learning: a slide-show of the presentation is available on-line.