Measurement of the Planck’s constant in the framework of the Lab2Go project

Aiming at exposing high school students to experimental Physics, Sapienza Universita`a di Roma and INFN participate to the Lab2Go project in the context of PCTO and supported by PLS. In a webinar offered in the framework of the Lab2Go@home initiative (on- line version of Lab2Go), tutors from INFN Roma 2 proposed a method for measuring the Planck’s constant by reconstructing the characteristic curve of a LED, acquiring voltage and intensity of current by using a voltmeter and an ammeter, respectively. A similar experiment, but replacing the voltmeter and the ammeter with an Arduino board, was proposed by tutors from Universit`a Sapienza and INFN Roma to students of Liceo Scientifico “L. Trafelli” in Nettuno. The employ of LEDs allows for a simple, but functional, approach to measure the Planck’s constant making it accessible to the high school level; moreover, using Arduino for the acquisition of voltage and current enables a fast execution of the experiment and allows students to acquire additional competences, as for example coding and programming. In this report, we will show the two measurement methods and the obtained results.