The physics of the last century is now included in all EU secondary school curricula and
textbooks, even if in not organic way. Nevertheless, there are very different positions as concern
its introduction and students’ conceptual knots in classical physics are quoted to argue the
exclusion of modern physics in secondary school. Aspects discussed in literature are goals,
rationale, contents, target students, instruments and methods. Very different goals, i.e. the culture
of citizens, popularization, guidance, education, build different perspectives and aspects to treat
selection: fundament, technologies and applications. Methods used are story telling of the main
results, argumentation of crucial problems, integrated or as a complementary part in the
curriculum. Modern physics in secondary school is a challenge, which involves curriculum
innovation, teacher education and physics education research to individuate ways that allows the
students to face the interpretative problems and manage them in many contexts and in social
decisions. In this perspective, modern physics is an integrated content in curricula involving the
building of formal thinking. Our research focus on building of formal thinking is on three
directions: 1) Learning processes and role of reasoning in operative hands-on and minds-on
phenomena interpretation; 2) object - models as tools to bridge common sense to physics ideas
and ICT contribution focusing on real time labs and modelling; 3) building theoretical way of
thinking: a path inspired of Dirac approach to quantum mechanics. We developed four different
kind of proposals: 1) the physics of modern research analysis in material science: resistivity and
Hall effect for electrical transport properties, Rutherford Backscattering Spectroscopy to look to
structure characteristics, Time Resolved Resistivity for epitaxial growth; 2) Explorative approach
to superconductivity phenomena (a coherent paths), 3) Discussion of some crucial / transversal
concepts both in classical physics and modern physics: state, measure, cross section, 4) foundation
of theoretical thinking in quantum mechanics.
