Related papers: A Review of Student Difficulties in Upper-Level Qu…
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…
Prior research has demonstrated how the realist perspectives of classical physics students can translate into specific beliefs about quantum phenomena when taking an introductory modern physics course. Student beliefs regarding the…
Students often begin physics courses with misconceptions rooted in everyday experience and intuition, which can be resistant to change. While research has identified strategies for addressing misconceptions across physics, it remains…
A common learning goal for modern physics instructors is for students to recognize a difference between the experimental uncertainty of classical physics and the fundamental uncertainty of quantum mechanics. Our studies suggest this…
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…
University students taking introductory physics are generally successful executing mathematical procedures in context, but often struggle with the use of mathematical concepts for sense making. Physics instructors note that their students…
We describe the development of a course of quantum mechanics for secondary school designed to address the challenges related to the revision of classical knowledge, to the building of a well-organized knowledge structure on the discipline,…
We describe a study focusing on students' and faculty members' reasoning about problems of differing cognitive complexity related to the double-slit experiment (DSE) with single particles. In the first phase of the study, students in…
Most introductory quantum physics instructors would agree that transitioning students from classical to quantum thinking is an important learning goal, but may disagree on whether or how this can be accomplished. Although (and perhaps…
Most continuous mathematical formulations arising in science and engineering can only be solved numerically and therefore approximately. We shall always assume that we're dealing with a numerical approximation to the solution. There are two…
Developing expertise in physics requires appropriate integration and assimilation of physics and mathematics. Instructors and students often describe physics courses in terms of their emphasis on conceptual and quantitative problem-solving.…
A common learning goal for modern physics instructors is for students to recognize a difference between the experimental uncertainty of classical physics and the fundamental uncertainty of quantum mechanics. Our prior work has shown that…
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…
Quantum mechanics can seem like a departure from everyday experience of the physical world, but constructivist theories assert that learners build new ideas from their existing ones. To explore how students can navigate this tension, we…
Quantum mechanics is a challenging subject, even for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Here, we discuss the development and evaluation of research-based concept tests for peer instruction as a formative assessment tool in…
Quantum mechanics is challenging even for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Dirac notation is a convenient notation used extensively in quantum mechanics. We have been investigating the difficulties that the advanced…
We are trying to identify resources students are using to reason in quantum mechanics. In this process we realize students must have not only the right resources available but sophisticated for evaluating and controlling their thought…
Difficulties and discomfort with the interpretation of quantum mechanics are due to differences in language between it and classical physics. Analogies to The Special Theory of Relativity, which also required changes in the basic worldview…
Measurement uncertainty is an important topic in the undergraduate laboratory curriculum. Previous research on student thinking about experimental measurement uncertainty has focused primarily on introductory-level students' procedural…
Since its inception at the beginning of the twentieth century, quantum mechanics has challenged our conceptions of how the universe ought to work; however, the equations of quantum mechanics can be too computationally difficult to solve…