First Steps into Physics in the Winery
Physics is introduced as a basic matter in the curricula of professional schools (i.e. schools for agriculture, electronic or chemistry experts). Students meet physics in the early years of their training and then continue in vocational subjects where many physics' topics can be useful. Rarely, however, the connection between physics and professional matters is quite explicit. Students often feel physics as boring and useless, i.e. very far from their interests. In these schools it is almost always required the physics lab, but it does not always exist. The physics teachers of a local Agricultural Technical Institute asked us to realize a learning path in laboratory for their students, since in their school the physics lab was missing. This institute is the only public school in the Chianti area specializing in Viticulture and Enology, and attending a further year post diploma, allows the achievement of the qualification of Enologist. We report a learning path realized starting from thermal equilibrium to a full understanding of the measures made with the Malligand's ebulliometer, used for determining the alcoholic strength (alcohol concentration by volume) of an alcoholic beverage