Quantum Mechanics foundations teaching at Secondary School: a didactic and cognitive analysis of a sequence of situations

FANARO, MARIA DE LOS ANGELES; OTERO, MARIA RITA

Science Education Research in South and Latin America.

Kenneth Tobin & Wolff-Michael Roth. Sense Publishers B.V

Año: 2020; p. 113 - 155

This chapter deals with the problem of the teaching of the fundamental concepts of Quantum Mechanics (QM) in high school. Many investigations in this area recognize the importance of the treatment of the quantum concepts at secondary school. Nevertheless, the usual way of teaching QM follows a strictly historical line. This prevents from approaching QM´s fundamental aspects.First we ask which approximation to the "quantum world? is possible to teach at school. We have conceived a conceptual structure of reference related to the viewpoint of the Quantum Mechanics of Feynman ?Path Integrals?, that is alternative and complementary to the canonical method. Our design allows to avoid the strictly historical and traditional development that is usually adopted in QM teaching. We begin by the Classic Physics ? using concepts familiar to the students- and we analyze the limit QM-classic. Thus, the ways of teaching the concept of quantum system and the Principles of Superposition and Correspondence are studied. Using a geometric-vector frame the mathematical formulation of the Path Integral is adapted to the student?s mathematical knowledge. This sample allows the emergence of student?s ideas: electrons like ?the small balls?. Moreover, it shows how the concept of quantum system associated to the Path Integrals technique explains the probability curve of the electrons. A previous didactic analysis was made to anticipate as much as possible the actions of the students and the teacher. We have implemented the didactic sequence, and the results related to the concepts reached by the students, situation by situation, are presented here.