TEACH KIDS BY KIDDING.. hahahahahahaha; for instance, here are three crazies playing hide-and-seek (a confused elder having fun with a confusing nine-year-old and an imaginative six-year-old):

• The elder facing a wall launches: “I’m coming to find you guys... are you hidden“?

• The confusing-nine-year-old responds: “you can’t... we are everywhere and nowhere“.

• The confused-elder exclaims with a laugh: “ what... no little bro, God does not play dice“!

• The confusing nine-year-old replicate with a laugh: “who are you to tell God what to do”?

• Instead of the lost-elder, the imaginative six-year-old responds without hesitation: “Santa-Claus“.

I think the world of quantum is really strange and complex. But the matter is aggravated by the fact that the Copenhagen interpretation, in my opinion, is erroneous and makes quantum mechanics truly incomprehensible.

I came up with another interpretation that even a schoolboy can understand -- see my article

Preprint Subquantum leapfrog

Dear Lev, as you yourself mentioned in the end of your paper “your hypothesis is vague and what bothered me the most is that you didn’t openly describe how it would be falsified ”... So, before trashing Bohr’s model, even if I myself don’t agree with some stuffs in the Copenhagen interpretation, still v=C/137 is undeniable and unavoidable... I hope you know what it represents; can you prove it wrong ?

Coming back on the present topic, dear Yuri‘s question is more about how to easily teach; which requires a natural win of attention from his relaxed students without imposing anything on them... Therefore, to be capable of a such huge task, one may need to eloquently articulate with kinda humor already known and commonly accepted falsifiable stuffs:

In other words, dear Yuri needs to find a way to become A GOOD COMMUNICATOR that I’m not obviously... hahahahaha.

Dear Olivier,

Physics has accumulated several dogmas that reflect old misconceptions. One of the main ones is SR. The logical contradictions and inconsistencies they contain hinder learning (and the progress of science in general).

Therefore, before we look for ways to best teach physics, we need to correct old mistakes. Then the theories, I believe, will become clear and understandable to students.

Then you dont teach qm but modern physics, a prelude, topics like de Broglie

Wave length and atomic level.

A snake going around an atom has 3(say)

Wiggles and than grabs itself by the tail.

The thread question “How to make the teaching of quantum physics easier to highschool students?” rather evidently contradicts with the thread preface, which is about

“…how can we make the teaching of advanced physics subjects such as quantum mechanics, attractive to people with small knowledge of our work? I'm thinking about creating a mini work named "Quarks, Prótons e nêutrons, um pouco sobre física para você"…..”

So here below a comment just to the thread question, i.e. not to “people with small knowledge”.

That “…we all know, everyone who studies physics is viewed as crazy mad scientists,…”, when is addressed to QM, indeed essentially takes place, first of all since QM looks as some mystic theory that describes some for/by some mystic reason/way existent mystic random objects/events/processes, which drastically differ from “quite understandable” deterministic objects/events/processes in “classical” physics; and that also is tooo strange because that “God does not play dice!”

Really this transcendent/mystic imagination about what exists and happens on QM scale exists because really in mainstream philosophy and sciences, including physics, all really fundamental phenomena/notions, first of all in this case “Consciousness”, “Space”, “Time”, “Energy”, “Information”, “Matter”

– and so everything in Matter, i.e. “particles”, “fundamental Nature forces” – and so “fields”, etc., are fundamentally completely transcendent/uncertain/irrational.

So really “classic” theories are equally mystically for mainstream physicists describe what exists and happens on “classic” macroscale, which is “understandable logically deterministically” by humans really only completely instinctively, i.e. really transcendently; and so, really when classical theories address to really fundamental points

- that always happens at formulation of theories’ postulates, which really are some fundamentally non-provable assertions that follow only from experimental data, and so fundamentally have no real explanations – why these data – and further postulates – are as they are?.

Correspondingly practically all, including classical, theories are based including on really illusory fundamentally wrong postulates, say, in the SR/GR some illusory “relativistic properties and effects” are postulated, in classical ED and QED [and all QFTs] the energy conservation law is violated, etc.

The phenomena/notions above can be, and are, really rigorously scientifically defined only in framework of the Shevchenko-Tokarevsky’s philosophical 2007 “The Information as Absolute” conception, recent version of the basic paper see

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/363645560_The_Information_as_Absolute_-_2022_ed

- though in this case more concretely in physics in the Shevchenko-Tokarevsky’s Planck scale informational physical model, 3 main papers are

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354418793_The_Informational_Conception_and_the_Base_of_Physics

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/367397025_The_Informational_Physical_Model_and_Fundamental_Problems_in_Physicssection 6. “Mediation of the fundamental forces in complex systems”

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369357747_The_informational_model_-Nuclear_Force

- where, correspondingly, more 30 fundamental physical problems are either solved or essentially clarified,

Including the problem “why what exists and happens in Matter on QM scale is as it is?” really has rather simple solution: that is because that the absolutely fundamental phenomenon “Change” is logically self-inconsistent, and so instant and continuous [current] deterministic changes of anything are prohibited,

- since in such changing at every infinite time moment state of changing something is simultaneously former, recent, and future states, which, by definition of “Change”, are different.

To overtake this fundamental logical prohibition of change and to change, including to create, something, it is necessary to pay by two points: (i) – to spend some portion of some really mystic till now, including in SS&VT conception above, phenomenon/Quantity “Energy”, and (ii) - nonetheless logics is absolutely mighty “force”, and so (i) isn’t sufficient, correspondingly on some level/scale state of anything changing is fundamentally uncertain – “illogical”.

In Matter that is QM scale, and so in QM there is no mystics; while any God fundamentally isn’t able not to play dice.

More about some other really strange/illusory points in QM see the model above, first of all the 2-nd link; though, again, in mainstream physics many other illusory postulates are, which are clarified in other linked papers.

Cheers

Dear Lev,

I agree with you that some issues need to be addressed but that’s another topic.

Dear Juan,

De Broglie equation clarifies and confirms Bohr’s concept of the atom... So, modern physics isn’t that modern and has its own shortcomings, by the way that’s also another topic.

At the end of the day, I think this topic is all about a teaching methodology (simplicity and humor count).

Recent SS post in https://www.researchgate.net/post/Gravitation_and_Quantum_indeterminacy_contradict_each_other_something_is_not_right

- is an example how really mainsteam physics transforms quantum physics into some quite really mystic “science”….

Cheers

The question I think you need to start with is: What aspect of quantum mechanics do you want to convey to high school students? If you want to convey something that might capture their interest and make them curious to know more, then you need to know quantum mechanics really, really well. This is what Richard Feynman meant when he said that to know something really well, you need to be able to explain it to a 6th grader. He was one of the rare physicists who tried to do that.

However, his approach to teaching first-year undergraduates was to tell them first, before anything else, that they should not expect him to explain quantum mechanics to them because he doesn't understand it, and he has never met anyone who did understand it. He then goes on to say that what he is going to explain is how to use it and how to practice it.

I like the honesty of Feynman's approach, but I don't think it is going to capture the interest of many or make them curious to want to understand more. But you know your students better than I do.

Therefore, I would suggest something more interesting: How to explain the aspects of quantum mechanics that are the most puzzling. In other words, share the parts of quantum mechanics that no one understands in a way that they can get a sense of what makes QM so baffling.

Here are two examples that you could use along these lines.

First, Jeremy Bernstein described how the physicist John Bell liked to explain entanglement: Bell referred to examples about identical twins who had been separated at birth. "Bell discovered that there were a number of pairs that had been reunited later in life to find that they had a remarkable number of things in common, including smoking the same brand of cigarette." I think this is a great way of describing entanglement that makes it relatable and also portrays it with a simple yet accurate metaphor. You could take this further by explaining that physicists create entangled photons by causing an atom to eject two photons at the same time, just like twins being born at the same time. The question is, how do two identical twins stay aligned to each other if they were separated at birth. Many people might think it is their DNA, but, in fact, DNA does not determine the brand of cigarettes they choose to smoke, and other similarities between twins. This is the same sort of mystery in quantum mechanics: How do the particles act as if they share the same state even when they are miles apart? That's the puzzle.

Second, the physicist Carlo Rovelli has tried to simplify one of the aspects of quantum mechanics that is truly hard to fathom. He calls his approach Relational Quantum Mechanics. I am simplifying his point here, but he explains how classical states, such as position, velocity, momentum, exist as things you can measure that belong as properties to an object. However, quantum states are not observer independent. They don't exist objectively, they only exist in relation.

The physicist David Mermin said something similar:

"My complete answer to the late 19th century question “what is electrodynamics trying to tell us” would simply be this: Fields in empty space have physical reality; the medium that supports them does not.

"Having thus removed the mystery from electrodynamics, let me immediately do the same for quantum mechanics: Correlations have physical reality; that which they correlate does not.

"The first proposition probably sounded as bizarre to most late 19th century physicists as the second sounds to us today; I expect that the second will sound as boringly obvious to late 21st century physicists as the first sounds to us today.

And that’s all there is to it."

David Mermin later dropped his explanation, and the reason is that he couldn't answer this question: Correlations between what? But portrays the real puzzle because quantum states act as relational states, but relations between what? This is the mystery that physics does not yet have an answer for. This is an accurate description of what makes quantum states so baffling.

Sometimes explaining a mystery in simple words is easier, and more interesting, than trying to explain a practice, especially when no one knows why that practice works or what it is telling us about reality.

I'm sure you can come up with other simple examples like these two. This is just a suggestion: describing the mystery. Leaving it with them as an unsolved mystery.