0000000000442571
AUTHOR
Sara Roberta Barbieri
Superconductivity explained with the tools of the classical electromagnetism. Educational path for secondary school and its experimentation.
The work of this thesis describes an educational path for the presentation of superconductivity at the secondary school, together with the experimentation of some particular parts of the path with high school students. The educational path that we have developed is mainly centred on the phenomenological aspects of superconductivity and has been inspired by the two fluid theory of Gorter and Casimir (1934) where a superconductor is seen as a material in which two fluids are present, the normal fluid described by the Ohm's laws, and the superconductive fluid descibed by the London equation (1935). Both the Ohm's laws and the London equation give respectively the phenomenological descriptions …
The explicative power of the vector potential for superconductivity: a path for high school
In the classroom practice the notion of the magnetic vector potential is never introduced, both because it is not contained in secondary school textbooks and because teachers usually associate this concept with complex topics they dealt with in their university courses. In our experience instead, we have found that the introduction of the vector potential can be of great help in students’ understanding of electromagnetism and modern physics topics. In this paper we will show how the use of the vector potential allows a phenomenological and consistent explanation of superconductivity at a level suitable for high school students. We will deal with the two main aspects of superconductivity: th…
Vector Potential at High School: A Way to Introduce Superconductivity and to Review Electromagnetism
Superconductivity is a rich and complex topic that generates great interest and curiosity in high school students. Most of the presentations of superconductivity give a great importance to magnetism. But typically in these presentations the physical role is played by the magnetic field B while the magnetic vector potential A is never mentioned. Moreover the explanation of the quantum phenomena at the base of the superconductivity are often not enough developed and generally given only at a popular level. We think that the key point for a meaningful presentation at high school is the vector potential. In this paper we present a teaching path on the vector potential and a pilot experimentatio…