Climate change: The physical basis of radiative phenomena for the study of the greenhouse effect

Effective teaching of the physical basis of the greenhouse effect is an essential element in understanding society's role in altering the radiative balances that are leading to current climate change. The results of recent research in this field show that two key concepts for its understanding are still incompletely learned by students. These concepts are the thermal emission of bodies, and the interaction of electromagnetic radiation (at various frequencies) with different materials. In this paper we present some experiments to facilitate the learning of these concepts and their integration within an existing teaching-learning sequence focused on the physical basis of the greenhouse effect. The results of this experimentation will also be illustrated and compared with previous proposals.