0000000000698321
AUTHOR
M Giliberti
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…
Conduction as a prerequisite to superconductivity
As the number of high school students interested in modern physics is always increasing, the University of Milan is developing a project on superconductivity in which experiments and theory are proposed to students. The present paper is divided into two main parts. The first analyzes the basic concepts necessary to understand superconductivity. For a start we propose the first step of a designbased research were students learn the London phenomenological approach. In this way students’ can get the explanation of experiments easy to obtain in the lab-room, such as Meissner effect and the measure of the critical temperature of a type II superconductor. The second part analyzes the results obt…
MASTER IDIFO (INNOVAZIONE DIDATTICA IN FISICA E ORIENTAMENTO): A COMMUNITY OF ITALIAN PHYSICS EDUCATION RESEARCHERS AND TEACHERS AS A MODEL FOR A RESEARCH BASED IN-SERVICE TEACHER DEVELOPMENT IN MODERN PHYSICS.
Since 2005, the Italian Universities have promoted initiatives for school-university cooperation in the framework of a national project (PLS) to face the problems of a substantial scienti c illiteracy in young people and a worrying decreasing interest in physics emerging from OCSE-PISA data. The project PLS is nanced by the Ministry for Education and Universities and coordinates 65 local university projects in mathematics, physics, chemistry and material science. The collaboration of Universities with teachers in the PLS physics section is an important goal realized in different ways. The Italian university Physics Education Research Unit (IPERU), cooperating with national research projects…
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…