In the last couple decades, the studies on the domination of all kinds of media in the education world became very important. Very recently, a survey of the physics teacher candidates, gymnasium students and intellectuals in Turkey have also investigated for the qualitative effects of the media in the framework of CERN Higgs particle (God particle) experiments (Saglik et al., 2012, 2013). This chapter considers the survey for Turkish physics teacher candidates given in Saglik (2013) to understand how the scientific knowledge is deconstructed by the simulation of media.
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At today’s historical juncture, media culture has arguably become the most dominant force defining the sense of self, driving our understanding of the ‘Other,’ and providing “symbols, myths and resources” for generating a common culture (Kellner, 1995). Within this direction, the results of scientific research have recently been cited in mass media. And the recent investigations in educational sciences also indicate that the media started to take position as a educator role. Particularly, in natural sciences (Erkılıç, 2008).
Thus, it cannot be claimed that the education world will be exempt from the simulation world. If we follow J. Baudrillard simulation theory (Baudrillard, 1995) up, at least, we should agree that as the principle of reality, the knowledge, scientific events and progress are simulated by media (social media, TV, e-media, journal, etc.) in very fast and long correlations.
Very recently we have established a qualitative study to understand how the physics knowledge of the educated people and the world of physics education in popular domain in Turkey are affected by the mass of media (Sağlık et al., 2012; 2013) on the questionnaire which has been based on the master of Science (MS) study by S. Sağlık (Sağlık, 2013). Within this context, a semi-structured questionnaire (Yıldırım&Şimşek, 2011) was conducted for physics teacher candidates, gymnasium students including intellectuals in Turkey about the Higgs Particle (God Particle) discovery experiments in 2012 in CERN (European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva, www.cern.ch) (Sağlık et al., 2012; 2013). Please note that The Nobel Prize in Physics 2013 was awarded jointly to François Englert and Peter W. Higgs for the discovery of Higgs Particle by the experiments at CERN (The Nobel Prize in Physics, 2013)
In this chapter, since the Higgs Particle became so popular as God Particle in media world, the answers given in survey (Sağlık et al., 2012; 2013) are going to be critiqued by the both Baudrillard simulation theory (Baudrillard, 1995) and Chaotic Awareness simulation theory (Akdeniz, 2007; 2009; 2011). Thereby, the qualitative emergences of Turkish media simulations of the experiments at CERN are going to be correlated.
We find more interesting to focus our attention on the questionnaire of physics teacher candidates (PTC) case given in (Sağlık, 2013). Because, they (PTC) are the 2012 spring term students of teaching certificate program in Educational Faculty (Marmara University, Istanbul. Turkey) and they are already undergraduated in physics from different Universities in Turkey.