It is difficult that looking to the world there had not come to mind questions of the kind: why do we hear music? Whay do we see things coloured? How can we see very distant objects such as stars and galaxies? Whay don’t Earth and the Sun go to pieces? Apparently different facts, that do not let suspect something in common: what does it has there to do an orchestra that plays well firm at a few meters away from a galaxy, distant millions or miliards light years, which runs away at a threatful speed?
Yet physics, or better physicians, have found a sort of substrate which unites thangs so disparate and they have made it one of the most important notions of science: they are “waves”, object of the exhibit. What experience have the non specialists of this fundamental wavering characteristic ownd by the world in which we live? It is the issue that the exhibition tries to clarify, precise and define.
It stars from the “common sense” to arrive to how much physics can tell us about the important aspect of the mystery of a universe that has been given to us – but which is able to give news of itself and to be known – through wavering phenomena. A universe that, without waves of a diverse nature, could not even be kept together, that exhibits wavering characteristics even in elementary particles such as the electron.
An itinerary – let as say now – not easy, because to show with the due rigour and in an attractive way a concept of physics, that is something of abstract, requires a commitment with editors and the public. The attempt had however to be made to do justice to physics that is not a set of “little games” more or less strange and stupifying, as it is presented thinking to meke it interesting, but – here it is the challange of the exhibition – it is a mixture of theory and experimentation, a consistency of observations and concepts. The exhibitions becomes this way an attempt to comprehend what physicians do and the occasion to understand how this science works.