Physics' curricula of Italian Scientific High Schools in the last years have been enhanced by the introduction of Quantum Mechanics and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). Education monitoring reveals that last year's students are experiencing many issues in learning in their second language (L2) and advanced and counter-intuitive contents. Our experiment is aimed at understanding and then overcoming those problems using educational methodologies based on social aspects. Thanks to the Internet, a communicative style can be exploited where teachers could keep teaching, playing the role of semiotic mediators. Multimedia and simulations broadly available in MOOCS suggested a flipped classroom approach coping with the project of CLIL lessons. In our experience two classrooms of students were selected, starting from very similar performances and skills. The first one was taught with traditional lectures and tests; the second one, instead, attended to experimental lessons. Students could share their ideas and learning supports through a Facebook group, a blog, virtual classrooms and a website. Nevertheless, at the end of the experience an eTwinning exchange was planned, to spread the experiment towards foreign schools. The outcomes of the tests performed on the students were analysed and unexpected results were drawn. An extension to larger numbers of students, the introduction of different methodologies and the research about different topics in Physics could potentially develop this research.
In recent years, Modern Physics has been included in the curricula of Italian secondary schools, so that many teachers are asking for specific didactical tools to allow their students to acquire the right skills to deal with final examinations. The Physics Department at University of Salerno (Italy) is, therefore, planning PLS (Piano Lauree Scientifiche / Scientific Degree Project) training courses to give some valid educational paths through new didactical strategies for Physics learning. Introducing quantum mechanics by experimental set-ups with commonly used materials is a rather interesting and challenging task. In fact, this practice allows teacher attending the course to reproduce the same experiments in their own class. Moreover, by using readily available material for the experimental set-up, a soft approach to Modern Physics can be achieved. In the present work, we propose the analysis of an experiment: the measurement of Planck’s constant, one of the most important fundamental quantities in Modern Physics, by means of Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs). The properties of LEDs can be explained by means of elementary quantum mechanics concepts. As a consequence, when describing the quantum behaviour of these commonly used physical systems, Planck’s constant needs to be considered. Therefore, to illustrate one possible way of measuring Planck’s constant to high-school students, we can make use of the current-voltage (I-V) characteristics of a LED. In fact, by opportunely interpreting the measured I-V curves of these systems, by means of a linear fitting the value of Planck’s constant can be obtained.
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