OPTICS CLASSROOM TEACHING DEMONSTRATIONS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOL

Classroom teaching demonstrations are an effective tool, in particular, for Physics at secondary school. We notice the importance of landing the scientific subjects to the real and daily world. Physics concerns to the nature’s phenomena and their laws, which in the framework of a theory are expressed in mathematical language. Sometimes the teaching-learning process is reduced to the presentation of equations and the numerical skills. This produces a separation between the academic context and the real world that science wants to explain. In this work we propose a series of experiments and demonstrations in Optics that may be done directly at the classroom by the teacher as an important support for teaching and learning Physics. These demonstrations serve as an introduction to students of the matters that later will be explained in a context more academic and mathematical. This also motivates for doing experimentation at home, so Physics will appear nearer and nicer. Optics is a branch of Physics in which one can find very easily lots of phenomena, materials and familiar instruments. We will show demonstrations with lenses (spectacles, magnifying glasses, etc.), mirrors, prisms, colour images and printers, filters, laser pointers (rays and trajectories), photovoltaic cells, optical instruments (microscopes, telescopes, digital cameras, projectors), and others.