5–12 Jul 2017
Venice, Italy
Europe/Zurich timezone
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Towards a demystification of quantum mechanics

Not scheduled
15m
Salone Adriatico (Palazzo del Casinò)

Salone Adriatico

Palazzo del Casinò

Board: OE-2
Poster Presentation Outreach, Education, and Diversity Poster session

Speaker

Giovanni Organtini (Sapienza Universita e INFN, Roma I (IT))

Description

Quantum Mechanics is being included in numerous school programmes as part of the curriculum. Most modern textbooks introduce it emphasising its strange or at least uncommon, somewhat paradoxical character. We argue that such an approach is wrong because rather than attracting the interest of students toward the topic, it makes it almost unbelievable and artificial. The resulting perception is that quantum mechanics is in fact not understood at all and that we need a new theory that eventually will supersede it.

In contrast, we propose a new approach on classical physics that, stressing the role of the measurements in physics, introduces the concept of state very early in the curriculum. Such a concept is reviewed on each classical physics topic and the concept of force as a vector is almost abandoned for the concept of interaction defined as something that change the state.

In this way it is possible to introduce quantum mechanics without violating any conviction the students acquired learning classical physics. In other words quantum mechanics appears to be as natural as classical physics, at least from the point of view of the results of the experiments.

Experimental Collaboration CMS

Primary author

Giovanni Organtini (Sapienza Universita e INFN, Roma I (IT))

Presentation materials