Vector Potential at High School: A Way to Introduce Superconductivity and to Review Electromagnetism

Abstract

Superconductivity is a rich and complex topic that generates great interest and curiosity in high school students. Most of the presentations of superconductivity give a great importance to magnetism. But typically in these presentations the physical role is played by the magnetic field B while the magnetic vector potential A is never mentioned. Moreover the explanation of the quantum phenomena at the base of the superconductivity are often not enough developed and generally given only at a popular level. We think that the key point for a meaningful presentation at high school is the vector potential. In this paper we present a teaching path on the vector potential and a pilot experimentation with two groups of high school students. The introduction of the vector potential is surely very challenging, but we believe that it can be of a great help in reviewing and clarifying many important aspects of basic electromagnetism. In this paper we give the framework of our educational rationale on superconductivity, a brief description of the teaching path on vector potential and some preliminary results of our experimentation.