Diffraction Testbed for Use in Remote Teaching

Abstract

The need for remote teaching tools in all education levels has experienced a big increase due to COVID-19 pandemic. Laboratory practical sessions have not been an exception, and many online and offline tools have been made available to respond to the lockdown of teaching facilities. This paper presents a software testbed named OPTILAB for teaching diffraction experiments to engineering students. The software simulates classical diffraction apertures (single slit, double slit, circular slit) under a wide variety of conditions. Explanation about the Physics behind the diffraction phenomenon is also included in OPTILAB to increase the students’ self-learning experience. Originally conceived as a complement to on-site teaching, due to COVID-19 pandemic OPTILAB has been adopted as the basic tool to build a brand-new, virtual laboratory session about diffraction in Physics III course (biomedical engineering) at Carlos III University of Madrid. Results obtained by the students taking this virtual lab during Fall 2020 are presented and discussed.

Keywords

• diffraction optics
• simulation
• self-study
• enhanced learning