Related papers: A Review of Student Difficulties in Upper-Level Qu…
Quantum computing, leveraging quantum phenomena like superposition and entanglement, is emerging as a transformative force in computing technology, promising unparalleled computational speed and efficiency crucial for engineering…
Formally investigating the sources of students' difficulties around specific subjects is crucial for developing appropriate strategies to help students. We have been studying difficulties in understanding magnetism encountered by students…
We investigate student comfort with the material in an upper-division spins-first quantum mechanics course. Pre-lecture surveys probing students' comfort were administered weekly, in which students assigned themselves a "discomfort level"…
An important goal of graduate physics core courses is to help students develop expertise in problem solving and improve their reasoning and meta-cognitive skills. We explore the conceptual difficulties of physics graduate students by…
Physics graduate teaching assistants (TAs) are often responsible for grading. Physics education research suggests that grading practices that place the burden of proof for explicating the problem solving process on students can help them…
Dirac notation is used commonly in quantum mechanics. However, many upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in physics have difficulties with representations of quantum operators corresponding to observables especially when using…
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…
Upper-level, undergraduate quantum mechanics (QM) is widely considered a difficult subject with many varied approaches to teaching it and considerable variation in content coverage. For example, two common approaches to undergraduate QM…
Recent years have seen significant activity on the problem of using data for the purpose of learning properties of quantum systems or of processing classical or quantum data via quantum computing. As in classical learning, quantum learning…
We address four main areas in which graduate quantum mechanics education can be improved: course content, textbook, teaching methods, and assessment tools. We report on a three year longitudinal study at the Colorado School of Mines using…
Computational physics is a key part of what it means to do physics in the twenty-first century. However, upper division computational physics remains a largely understudied area. We set out to understand the experiences of students in an…
In their study of physics beyond the first year of University -- termed upper-division in the US, many of students' primary learning opportunities come from working long, complex back-of-the-book style problems, and from trying to develop…
Just as expert physicists vary in their personal stances on interpretation in quantum mechanics, instructors vary on whether and how to teach interpretations of quantum phenomena in introductory modern physics courses. In this paper, we…
We investigated the common difficulties that students have with concepts related to rotational and rolling motion covered in the introductory physics courses. We compared the performance of calculus- and algebra-based introductory physics…
One area of physics education research has focused on the nature of ontologies (mental categorizations of concepts, substances and processes), and how they might be used to gain insight into student thinking when learning classical physics.…
The hard problem in consciousness is the problem of understanding how physical processes in the brain could give rise to subjective conscious experience. In this paper, I suggest that in order to understand the relationship between…
The large number of published articles in physics journals under the title "Comments on ..." and "Reply to ..." is indicative that the conceptual understanding of physical phenomena is very elusive and hard to grasp even to experts, but it…
The Quantum Mechanics Conceptual Survey (QMCS) is a 12-question survey of students' conceptual understanding of quantum mechanics. It is intended to be used to measure the relative effectiveness of different instructional methods in modern…
It is demonstrated that the reason for the diversity of interpretations of quantum mechanics is that they are not connected by continuity relations with classical physics, and also the reason is the impossibility of operationalist…
Highly successful students, as measured by grades and by scores on the Force Concept Inventory, still struggle with fundamental concepts in mathematics and physics. These difficulties, which turn physics into parrot learning and include…