Abstract
In our contribution we describe how to present and explain the photoelectric effect within a secondary school or a university introduction to quantum physics. The means of the integrated e-learning method we use and recommend are e-texts, e-textbooks usually within any LMS environment (their choice and preparation are decided by tutors) and especially a remotely controlled real experiment or a virtual experiment that we describe here in details.
In our remote laboratory www.ises.info we develop new remote experiments that often need some expensive equipment or that are inconvenient for lessons or lectures for various reasons (security, time consumption, etc.). Sharing such experimental equipment enables to anyone, at any time and from anywhere a careful study of a physical phenomenon with more other advantages.
Moreover, for the explanation of the new phenomenon we recommend to use a simplified virtual experiment like the applet "Photoelectric Effect" from the team PhET.colorado.edu. Proposal of the teaching-learning sequence and the processing of real experimental data are discussed in the text.
We consider two common methods: charging a capacitor up to the stopping voltage and its determination from the volt-ampere characteristics of a vacuum phototube.