Experience gravity in the classroom using the rubber sheet: an educational proposal from the collaboration between University and School
Adriana Postiglione, Ilaria De Angelis

TL;DR
This paper presents a collaborative, low-cost educational activity using a rubber sheet analogy to teach General Relativity concepts in high school, making complex physics accessible and engaging.
Contribution
It introduces a practical, step-by-step classroom activity and educational materials developed through collaboration between university researchers and high school teachers.
Findings
Effective visualization of spacetime curvature
Enhanced student engagement with complex physics
Feasible low-cost classroom implementation
Abstract
Teaching modern physics in high school is of increasingly importance as it can offer students a more realistic and updated vision of the world, and can provide an opportunity to understand the most recent scientific discoveries. In this context, General Relativity (GR) occupies a prominent place, since it is related to astonishing scientific results, such as the first image of a black hole or the discovery of gravitational waves. In this paper we describe an educational proposal aimed at teaching GR in high school in a fun and playful way using the so-called rubber sheet analogy. We present a set of instructions to build a simple and low-cost space-time simulator, and a series of related educational cards that guide the teacher in the implementation of the activities step by step. This work is the result of a long and productive debate among Italian high school teachers who collaborate…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
