Narrative Approaches to Mechanics
Based Upon Continuum Physics
Learning to understand mechanics is not easy but it is crucially important at many levels of expertise in industry. This observation and social responsibility were some of the driving forces that led the Ducati Foundation to establish Fisica in Moto, an Industrial Educational Laboratory for mechanics. The original motivation was to provide a learning environment for young people that would allow them to experience, and maybe even work on, authentic applications of physics in industrial mechanics. At the urging of the foundation, a beautiful and richly outfitted laboratory for mechanics in automotive applications was built between 2006 and 2008 at the Ducati factories in Bologna, Italy.
Ducati Foundation charged Federico Corni with designing didactic elements of the Lab. Work on this started in 2008. The approach integrates three major elements coming from (1) modern cognitive science, (2) continuum physics that uses an embodied perspective, and (3) dynamical systems modeling. These elements have suggested creating an imaginative and narrative approach to the conceptualization of mechanical phenomena.