Teaching and Learning Physics: Performance Art Evoking Insight

Doing experiments in physics lessons can create a magical moment if students become really intrigued with the experimental progression. They add a new quality to what the experiment shows. Their attention and nature's revelations flow together: a performance is taking place. It's similar to a moment during a theatrical performance, when the spectators' and actors' energy flow together and their feeling of being separated from one another dissolves. Together with the atmosphere of the stage scenery they reform something new, unique, and volatile, and the fourth wall, that imaginary wall between actors and audience, breaks down. Erika Fischer-Lichte refers to such moments as “the transformative power of performance: a new aesthetics.” Below, I will discuss what this transformative power with respect to teaching and learning physics can be, particularly how the involvement in experimental demonstrations develops deeper insights into the way in which the laws of physics are “prodigious.”