Abstract

There are few Optics contents along the primary and secondary studies in Spain. So, the relation between Optics and Technology is usually poorly known by the students. As a consequence, the number of students in Physics in general, and Optics in particular is low. In this paper we explain a project to show some topics in Optics Technology in a primary-secondary school. This project involves some Optics teachers in the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and a group of teachers and students of a primary-secondary school also in Barcelona (I.E.S. Costa i Llobera). Several Optics posters (made by the SPIE) were shown during one week. More than 200 students from 8 to 17 years old visited the Optics exhibition during this week. A group of 4 students (17 years old) were trained to show the posters to younger students. For this study we chose three age levels. For each level, a 50% of the students attended the exhibition and the rest didn’t attend the poster session. So, it was possible to realize a survey to check whether some knowledge differences appeared between the two groups. A questionnaire was fulfilled by these groups. The results of this survey show that a significant new knowledge in Optics was learned by the students.

© 2009 Optical Society of America