Related papers: Interpretation in Quantum Physics as Hidden Curric…
To date, quantum mechanics has proven to be our most successful theoretical model. However, it is still surrounded by a "mysterious halo" that can be summarized in a simple but challenging question: Why quantum phenomena are not understood…
This article describes an undergraduate physics module at a university in England that places year 3 student physicists in secondary school classrooms for a semester. This is done as a way of introducing them to the occupation of secondary…
We argue that most advances in science and technology during the past and the present centuries rely on modern physics concepts developed in the early $20$th century. The reliance is so profound that any improvement of literacy of science…
While quantum mechanics (QM) is covered at length in introductory physics textbooks, the concept of quantum entanglement is typically not covered at all, despite its importance in the rapidly growing area of quantum information science and…
The paper reviews and discusses four ideas scattered in previous papers of the author. First, objective properties of quantum systems are not associated with observables but are defined by preparations. Second, measurable results of…
Popular media is an unspoken yet ever-present element of the physics landscape and a tool we can utilize in our teaching. It is also well-understood that students enter the physics classroom with a host of conceptions learned from the world…
Elementary particle physics is gradually implemented into science curricula at high school level. However, common presentations on educational, semi-technical or popular level contain or support severe misconceptions. We discuss in…
Measurement uncertainty and experimental error are important concepts taught in undergraduate physics laboratories. Although student ideas about error and uncertainty in introductory classical mechanics lab experiments have been studied…
Quantum mechanics has maintained over the years the reputation of being "the most obscure theory." It works perfectly well, but nobody seems to know why. It has been argued that the difficulty in understanding quantum theory is our failed…
It is argued that a realistic interpretation of quantum mechanics is possible and useful. Current interpretations, from Copenhagen to many worlds are critically revisited. The difficulties for intuitive models of quantum physics are pointed…
Interpretation is not the only way to explain a theory's success, form and features, and nor is it the only way to solve problems we see with a theory. This can also be done by giving a reductive explanation of the theory, by reference to a…
Students' difficulties in quantum mechanics may be the result of unproductive framing and not a fundamental inability to solve the problems or misconceptions about physics content. We observed groups of students solving quantum mechanics…
We explore the difficulties that advanced undergraduate and graduate students have with non-relativistic quantum mechanics of a single particle in one spatial dimension. To investigate these difficulties we developed a conceptual survey and…
An assessment is given as to the extent to which pure unitary evolution, as distinct from environmental decohering interaction, can provide the transition necessary for an observer to interpret perceived quantum dynamics as classical. This…
This paper re-centres the discussion of student learning in physics to focus on context. In order to do so, a theoretically-motivated understanding of context is developed. Given a well-defined notion of context, data from a novel…
The job of a physicist is to describe Nature. General features, hypotheses and theories help to describe physics phenomena at a more abstract, fundamental level, and are sometimes tacitly assigned some sort of real existence; doing so…
Significant attention in the PER community has been paid to student cognition and reasoning processes in undergraduate quantum mechanics. Until recently, however, these same topics have remained largely unexplored in the context of emerging…
The paper defends the thesis that analysis of truth problem in the context of interpretations of quantum logic allows to reveal the prospect of elicitation of specifics of the relations between quantum mechanics and quantum logic in a…
What is the nature of reality? How should be an answer to this question? At this level, we are so deep that all our concepts are obscure. Quantum theory (QT) is at this level. The quest for interpreting it fails because the clarity of our…
In this article we discuss the problem of finding an interpretation of quantum mechanics which provides an objective account of physical reality. In the first place we discuss the problem of interpretation and analyze the importance of such…