Introducing quantum and statistical physics in the footsteps of einstein: A proposal†

Introducing some fundamental concepts of quantum physics to high school students, and to their teachers, is a timely challenge. In this paper we describe ongoing research, in which a teaching–learning sequence for teaching quantum physics, whose inspiration comes from some of the fundamental papers about the quantum theory of radiation by Albert Einstein, is being developed. The reason for this choice goes back essentially to the fact that the roots of many subtle physical concepts, namely quanta, wave–particle duality and probability, were introduced for the first time in one of these papers, hence their study may represent a useful intermediate step towards tackling the final incarnation of these concepts in the full theory of quantum mechanics. An extended discussion of some elementary tools of statistical physics, mainly Boltzmann’s formula for entropy and statistical distributions, which are necessary but may be unfamiliar to the students, is included. This discussion can also be used independently to introduce some rudiments of statistical physics. In this case, part of the inspiration came from some of Einstein’s papers. We present preliminary, qualitative results obtained with both teachers and selected pupils from various high schools in southern Italy, in the course of several outreach activities. Although the proposal was only tested in this limited context for now, the preliminary results are very promising and they indicate that this proposal can be fruitfully employed for the task.