Related papers: How numbers help students solve physics problems
As part of a larger study to understand instructors' considerations regarding the learning and teaching of problem solving in an introductory physics course, we investigated beliefs of first-year graduate teaching assistants (TAs) regarding…
Transfer of learning is an important objective of education. However, students usually have difficulties in solving physics transfer tasks even after having solved similar problems previously. We investigated if instruction provided using…
Differentiable physics provides a new approach for modeling and understanding the physical systems by pairing the new technology of differentiable programming with classical numerical methods for physical simulation. We survey the rapidly…
The key difference between math as math and math in science is that in science we blend our physical knowledge with our knowledge of math. This blending changes the way we put meaning to math and even to the way we interpret mathematical…
Computation, the use of a computer to solve, simulate, or visualize a physical problem, has revolutionized how physics research is done. Computation is used widely to model systems, to simulate experiments, and to analyze data. Yet, in most…
I am a second-year cognitive science major, and as a student who has completed my physical science distribution requirements, I will likely never again encounter Gauss's law. So why do I feel that the time and effort I devoted to solving…
We discuss a study in a first year college introductory physics course for physical science and engineering majors that shows that women, on average, feel less recognized by their physics instructors than men as students who can excel in…
Creating equitable performance outcomes among students is a focus of many instructors and researchers. One focus of this effort is examining disparities in physics student performance across genders, which is a well-established problem.…
Students' learning orientation, as applied towards learning problem solving, may be differentiated into learning a problem solving framework for its own sake, learning for the sake of doing well in the course, and non-goal-related…
Most students struggle when faced with complex and ill-structured tasks because the strategies taught in schools and universities simply require finding and applying the correct formulae or strategy to answer well-structured, algorithmic…
Traditional high-stakes summative assessments--timed, in-class exams accounting for a large percentage of the term's overall grade--have often received criticism from the educational community. Such assessments tend to prize a particular…
In this study, we explored the extent to which problems and instructional strategies affect social cohesion and interactions for information seeking in physics classrooms. Three sections of a mechanics physics course taught at a Chilean…
Many statistical issues arise in the analysis of Particle Physics experiments. We give a brief introduction to Particle Physics, before describing the techniques used by Particle Physicists for dealing with statistical problems, and also…
We analyze the problem solving strategies of physics professors in a case where their physical intuition fails. A non-intuitive introductory-level problem was identified and posed to twenty physics professors. The problem placed the…
We investigate studnets' use of words used in everyday language as well as in physics. We find students are more likely to identify and explain the meaning of the word as it is used in physics when they have become familiar with the…
We describe a study in which introductory physics students engage in reflection with peers about problem solving. The recitations for an introductory physics course with 200 students were broken into the "Peer Reflection" (PR) group and the…
We describe a study in which introductory physics students engage in reflection with peers about problem solving. The recitations for an introductory physics course with 200 students were broken into the "Peer Reflection" (PR) group and the…
Prior research has shown that physics students often think about experimental procedures and data analysis very differently from experts. One key framework for analyzing student thinking has found that student thinking is more point-like,…
Quantum mechanics is a field often considered very mathematical, abstract, and unintuitive. One way some instructors are hoping to help familiarize their students with these complex topics is to have the students see quantum effects in…
[Taken from the "README" in the book] My goal with this book is to provide some kind of bridge for mathematics between the high-school-level and college-level for physics students. From my perspective, our job as physicists is to observe…