Bend it like dark matter!

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel educational approach using jelly lenses as an analogy to teach high school students about dark matter and gravitational lensing, making complex physics concepts more accessible and engaging.

Contribution

It presents a creative, hands-on teaching method with an analysis of its educational potential and limitations, enhancing physics instruction on dark matter.

Findings

Jelly lenses effectively illustrate gravitational lensing concepts.

The analogy increases student engagement and understanding.

Limitations include oversimplification of complex phenomena.

Abstract

Dark matter is one of the most intriguing scientific mysteries of our time and offers exciting instructional opportunities for physics education in high schools. The topic is likely to engage and motivate students in the classroom and allows addressing open questions of the Standard Model of particle physics. Although the empirical evidence of dark matter links nicely to many standard topics of physics curricula, teachers may find it challenging to introduce the topic in their classrooms. In this article, we present a fun new approach to teach about dark matter using jelly lenses as an instructional analogy of gravitational lenses. We provide a brief overview of the history of dark matter to contextualise our presentation and discuss the instructional potential as well as limitations of the jelly lens analogy.