| Popis: |
At the University of Venda, the curriculum for chemistry students includes a module on Modern Physics, which is taken at second year. In this module, the students learn about special relativity, quantum theory of light, particle nature of matter, waves of matter, and an introduction to quantum mechanics. The pre-requisite courses for this module include mechanics and calculus. The module is usually taught by a physics specialist, and the chemistry students take it together with the students majoring in physics. The performance does not show noticeable differences between students majoring in chemistry and students majoring in physics. The learning challenges appear to be common to both groups of students. This suggests the importance of interactions between chemistry teachers and physics teachers on educational issues, with the expectation that similar measures may contribute to the quality of learning in both areas. The main challenges appear to be related to the novelty of the topics and of the different way of thinking in these areas – very different both from classical physics (with which students have already acquired a certain familiarity) and from everyday experience. The challenges manifest themselves when introducing topics such as non-absoluteness of simultaneity in relativity, the relativistic Doppler effect, the double nature of matter (wave-particle duality), the introductory quantum systems (for instance, the particle in the box). Some options that have been explored to try and facilitate understanding are outlined. |
