Teaching Physics to Non Physicist: Physics for Agricultural, Biotech and Environmental Sciences

Physics is a basic discipline for all sciences and therefore included in the university scientific degrees. The research problems are: to identify topic areas and meaningful contexts for each specific subject area in which the cultural value of physic emerged and is recognize; to use new technologies and lab activities to stimulate an active role of students in the construction of their learning and in the experimentation of the methods of physics. In the undergraduate degrees for Agricultural, Environmental and Nature Sciences, Science of Foods and Biotechnology at the University of Udine a physics course has been implemented, focused on topics such as the physics of fluids and examples taken from the wild, as contexts in which introduce and build the concepts of physic. The learning outcomes were evaluate with a written questionnaire on fluids. The analysis of real situations in lab and the clickers sections helps students to overcome main difficulties. Problematic areas for ¼ of students remained: Pascal principle; the passage static-dynamic; critical management of math, as for instance in the inverse problems.