How do girls manage to work with interest and success in physics classes? How are female identity development and learning physics intertwined during early adolescence? These questions are explored in an ethnomethodological case study design. The role of female students in physics classes can be understood as a real and phantasmagorical experimentation with elements of identity. The key to developing a physics-related identity seems to lie in the ability of girls who want to become physicists to do both: argue content-wise and simultaneously use the disciplinary symbols to structure what moves them internally. Crucial in this play with identities are the significant others - the teacher or peers: If they succeed in making the thought figures both manifest and...