Revista de Enseñanza de la Física (Jun 2018)
Light diffraction from a quantum approach: a proposal for secondary school
Abstract
Light diffraction phenomenon can be approached from different viewpoints depending on whether one seeks to describe the final result or the process of forming of that result; each of them with a model that allows to describe and predict the phenomenon. In this paper we propose a way to approach the light diffraction from the quantum perspective that adopts the Feynman approach, as a reference to make it teachable to high school students. Although the original method "Feynman's Path Integral" is complex, it is possible to apply it to the experiment of light diffraction in a simple way, based on geometrical-vectorial considerations, as is presented in the first part of this work. In the second part, we present the result of the work of didactic transposition in the sense of Chevallard, as a proposal to bring up the quantum concepts of probability and superposition. Our didactic proposal is based on the Theory of Conceptual Fields of Vergnaud, reason why the design of the sit-uations is the key for the conceptualization of the students. From this perspective, we present and describe the situations and simulations made with spreadsheets, as a calculation and visualization tool.
