The colours of Newton's Opticks: an advanced project for excellent students

TL;DR

This paper presents an advanced educational project for high-achieving students that immerses them in Newton's historical experiments and reasoning on light and colors, fostering deep understanding and communication skills.

Contribution

It introduces a historically informed, hands-on project that enhances physics learning through original experiments, reasoning, and public presentation, without requiring advanced mathematical training.

Findings

High student engagement and positive feedback

Effective communication of physics concepts to the public

Successful replication of Newton's experiments by students

Abstract

We describe in detail an advanced project devised for outstanding High School (or undergraduate) students with appropriate abilities in physical reasoning (rather than with a good standard preparation), centered around the well-known historical case of Newton's theory of light and colours. The different action lines along which the project is developed are aimed to let the students involved to: 1) think as Newton did, by building step by step all his knowledge and reasoning; 2) work as Newton did, by performing the whole series of his original experiments with prisms; 3) deduce as Newton did about the nature of light and colours; 4) present the results of their activity (including physics demonstrations) to the general public, in order to test abilities in communicating what learned and discovered (including video realization published on YouTube youtube). Such didactic aim is complemented by the purpose to realize a historically informed activity, given the potential key role of the History of Physics in promoting science at a deeper level, especially when no particular training in mathematics or advanced education is required. The highly favourable reception of the project by the students involved, as well as that deserved by the uneducated people to the activities demonstrated by the students in public events, testify for the success of such work.