Physics World

The interaction between science and religion has a long history Many medieval scientists held positions in the church, Einstein famously said that God did not "play dice" with the universe, while the conflict between Galileo and Pope Pius V was one of the key events in the history of science.

New investment and links with the West will help to rebuild science in Muslim nations

With software development becoming ever more important in physics research, Arfon Smith argues that we need to adopt better ways of recognizing those who contribute to this largely unrewarded activity.

Despite us living in an era of PowerPoint, smartboards and digital projection, the traditional blackboard still retains an aura and usefulness for physicists that more advanced technologies can’t match, as Philip Ball finds

As a PhD student I attended quite a few departmental seminars devoted entirely to collisions involving hydrogen in some form or other. If, as occasionally happened, the presentation failed to elicit any comments or queries from the audience, a safe question to ask the speaker was: "Have you tried this with helium?" If hydrogen was the atom of atoms – its single electron making calculations simple, in theory – helium was a three-body quantum nightmare with its electrons fiendishly correlated.

Rebecca Holmes describes groundbreaking experiments that finally closed the long-standing loopholes in Bell tests, suggesting the end of the road for local realism. But could local realism yet live on?

This special issue looks at some innovative ways to teach and learn physics.

Nowhere is the relevance of physics to everyday life more obvious than with the success of the DVD in the home-entertainment market. Sales of DVD players and recorders are booming, and last year consumers around the world spent over $20bn on DVD disks. In the UK, for instance, sales of DVD disks were more than twice those of video cassettes.

As anyone with a healthy fear of sticking their fingers into a plug socket will know, the behaviour of electrons in different materials varies dramatically.

Female academics do significantly more internal administrative work than their male counterparts, according to an analysis of surveys performed at US institutions.