Improving students' meaningful learning on the predictive nature of quantum mechanics

Abstract

This paper deals with research about teaching quantum mechanics to 3rd year high school students and their meaningful learning of its predictive aspect; it is based on the Master’s dissertation of one of the authors (CARVALHO NETO, 2006). While teaching quantum mechanics, we emphasized its predictive and essentially probabilistic nature, based on Niels Bohr’s complementarity interpretation (BOHR, 1958). In this context, we have discussed the possibility of predicting measurement results in well-defined experimental contexts, even for individual events. Interviews with students reveal that they have used quantum mechanical ideas, suggesting their meaningful learning of the essentially probabilistic predictions of quantum mechanics.

Keywords

• predictive nature of physical theories
• probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics
• meaningful learning