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 experimentation with two groups of high school students. The introduction of the vector potential is surely very challenging, but we believe that it can be of a great help in reviewing and clarifying many important aspects of basic electromagnetism. In this paper we give the framework of our educational rationale on superconductivity, a brief description of the teaching path on vector potential and some preliminary results of our experimentation.
Barbieri, S.R., Giliberti, M., Fazio, C. (2014). Vector Potential at High School: A Way to Introduce Superconductivity and to Review Electromagnetism. In Proceedings of the World Conference on Physics Education 2012 (pp.1267-1281). Ankara : Pegem Akademi.
Vector Potential at High School: A Way to Introduce Superconductivity and to Review Electromagnetism
BARBIERI, Sara Roberta;FAZIO, Claudio
2014-01-01
Abstract
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 experimentation with two groups of high school students. The introduction of the vector potential is surely very challenging, but we believe that it can be of a great help in reviewing and clarifying many important aspects of basic electromagnetism. In this paper we give the framework of our educational rationale on superconductivity, a brief description of the teaching path on vector potential and some preliminary results of our experimentation.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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