Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in high school teaching

Abstract

In Portuguese high school curricula concepts of quantum physics are taught in the discipline of physics in the 12th year of education. These concepts underlie the functioning of modern nano devices and nanotechnologies, but are difficult to understand by the students of this level of teaching, thus making it necessary the integration of new strategies to facilitate teaching-learning process. In this we show the activities we developed to illustrate the Heisenberg uncertainty relations, based on a simple low cost experimental setup and a computer simulation program in Modellus to study the diffraction of light by a slit.