Interactive screen experiments with single photons

Abstract

Single photons are used for fundamental quantum physics experiments as well as for applications. Originally being a topic of advance courses, such experiments are increasingly a subject of undergraduate courses. We provide interactive screen experiments (ISE) for supporting the work in a real laboratory, and for students who do not have access to a quantum optics laboratory. The main focus of the ISE is on undergraduate education, but some of the experiments are suitable for other levels of higher education as well.

Quantenoptik an Schulen. Studie im Mixed-Methods Design zur Evaluation des Erlanger Unterrichtskonzepts zur Quantenoptik

“…Stattdessen machen die verschiedenen Konzepte Gebrauch von vielfältigen Darstellungsformen, welche von abstrakten Symbolen [8,81,82,208,209], über Animationen oder Visualisierungen [101,143,80] bis hin zu interaktiven Bildschirmexperimenten reichen [28].…”

“…Bronner legt in seiner Arbeit die Vorteile von interaktiven Bildschirmexperimenten gegenüber Animationen dar: dabei stellt er insbesondere die Bedeutung der Beobachtung heraus, die in Animationen nicht möglich sei, da diese eine idealisierte Sichtweise auf die Natur darstellten. Stattdessen regten interaktive Bildschirmexperimente außerdem die Eigentätigkeit der Schülerinnen und Schüler an [29,28,26,30] (für Details zu interaktiven Bildschirmexperimenten sei auf Kapitel 2.3 dieser Arbeit verwiesen). Als Anforderung an ein neues Curriculum zur Quantenphysik halten wir daher fest:…”

Simulated Interactive Research Experiments as Educational Tools for Advanced Science

“…It is complemented by simplified graphical illustrations, interactive function graphs and applets which assist in visualizing the scientific models ( Fig. 2a ), similar to Physlet 23 , PhET 24 and others 18 25 26 . The visualization of fundamental concepts in a restricted parameter space helps students to prepare for their experimental assignments in the SiReX Laboratory .…”

Qubit quantum mechanics with correlated-photon experiments

“…Other creative initiatives include introducing quantum mechanics and associated laboratories in courses earlier in the curriculum. [7][8][9] The virtue of the experiments is that they confront the nonintuitive predictions of quantum mechanics directly. The availability of these experiments gives us an additional motivation to treat fundamental questions.…”