Inverse square law for light and radiation: A unifying educational approach

Abstract

Many concepts in the physics curricula can be explained by the inverse square law.  Point-like sources of gravitational forces, electric fields, light, sound and radiation obey the inverse square law. This geometrical law gives the ability of unifying educational approach of various cognitive subjects in all the educational levels.   During the last years we have been using engaging hands-on activities to help our students in order to understand the cohesion in Nature and to export conclusions from experimental data. The development of critical thinking is also stimulated by student‘s experimental activities. Teaching students to think critically is perhaps the most important and difficult thing we do as science teachers. In this paper three activities are described, which were executed by students. These activities are concerning the electromagnetic radiation and the main goal is to confirm the inverse square law. We used three activities entitled as: “Inverse square law-Light”, “Photometer construction” and “Radioactive source”.The significant motive for this work constituted the following question: “Is it possible to find lab activities which bring out unification and a non-piecemeal description of physical phenomena, helping students to think critically?”.