Electric conduction in solids: a pedagogical approach supported by laboratory measurements and computer modelling environments

2008

In this paper we present a pedagogic approach aimed at modeling electric conduction in semiconductors, built by using NetLogo, a programmable modeling environment for building and exploring multi‐agent systems. ‘Virtual experiments’ are implemented to confront predictions of different microscopic models with real measurements of electric properties of matter, such as resistivity. The relations between these electric properties and other physical variables, like temperature, are, then, analyzed.