The final edition of the Hands-on Physics (HOP) programme took place in April, concluding a three-year project which has reached 19 locations and trained 2,100 teachers in total across Italy.

Hands-On Physics provides an inquiry-based learning approach for middle school teachers to use in their classrooms. The aim of the project is to provide practical tools and ideas which put students at the centre of the learning space.

Using the 5E model (Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, Evaluate), the structure of HOP is simple: teachers receive an educational and experimental kit developed at CERN, accompanied by a training day where they get to use the kits before bringing them back to their classrooms – free of charge.

When surveyed immediately after the training, 77% of teachers reported being highly motivated to use the kit in class and 75% of participants rated the materials and training as “very useful” for their teaching practice. One year later, 86% of teachers said using the kits in their classroom had fostered student engagement in their teaching activities “a lot”.

What is in a HOP kit?

1. Mystery Box: containing a steel ball that moves along a concealed path. Students make and test their hypotheses about when the ball moves freely and when it encounters a wall.

2. Pressure: students explore concepts of pressure and density, learning why some objects float while others sink through classic buoyancy and pressure variation experiments.

3. Light: introduces the main properties of light – its composition, behaviour, and phenomena such as photons, lenses, interference, and reflection.

4. Electric Charge: contains a small electrostatic accelerator, which sparks curiosity about electric charge and electrostatic currents

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