This paper presents a straightforward experiment that directly and illustratively demonstrates double refraction. For this purpose, two liquid crystalline cells were designed to enable qualitative and quantitative measurements of the extraordinary refractive index direction dependence in a uniaxial nematic liquid crystal.
COBISS.SI-ID: 9541705
A demonstration experiment for physics students showing the dependence of the refractive index and absorption coefficient of wood on the direction of microwaves is presented. Wood and microwaves enable study of anisotropic properties, which are typically found in crystals.Wood is used as the persuasive representative of uniaxial anisotropic materials due to its visible structure and its consequent anisotropic properties. Wood can be cut in a general direction and wooden plates a few centimetres thick with well-defined fibre orientation are easily prepared. Microwaves are used because wood is transparent for microwaves and their centimetre-scale wavelength is comparable to the wood structure.
COBISS.SI-ID: 9559113
This paper presents a teaching module about liquid crystals. Since liquid crystals are linked to everyday student experiences and are also a topic of current scientific research, they are an excellent candidate for a modern topic to be introduced into education. We show that liquid crystals can provide a pathway through several fields of physics such as thermodynamics, optics and electromagnetism. We discuss what students should learn about liquid crystals and what physical concepts they should know before considering them. In the presentation of the teaching module, which consists of a lecture and experimental work in a chemistry and physics laboratory, we focus on experiments on phase transitions, polarization of light, double refraction and colours. A pilot evaluation of the module was performed among preservice primary school teachers who have no special preference for natural sciences. The evaluation shows that the module is very efficient in transferring knowledge. A prior study showed that the informally obtained pre-knowledge on liquid crystals of the first-year students from several different fields of study was negligible. Since social science students are the least interested in natural sciences, it can be expected that students in any study programme will on average achieve at least as good qualitative knowledge of phenomena related to liquid crystals as the group involved in the pilot study.
COBISS.SI-ID: 9606473