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Traditional tests are not effective tools for diagnosing the content and structure of students' knowledge of physics. As a possible alternative, a set of term-association tasks (the "ConMap" tasks) was developed to probe the…
We examine the spatial distribution of electrons generated by a fixed energy point source in uniform, parallel electric and magnetic fields. This problem is simple enough to permit analytic quantum and semiclassical solution, and it harbors…
The concept of electromotive force (emf) may be introduced in various ways in an undergraduate course of theoretical electromagnetism. The multitude of alternate expressions for the emf is often the source of confusion to the student. We…
Framing affects how students interpret, approach, and accomplish tasks. Little is known, however, about how students frame tasks in physics labs. During the first lab of a sequence designed to teach students about modeling and critical…
In this paper we address the problems of detecting objects of interest in a video and of estimating their locations, solely from the gaze directions of people present in the video. Objects can be indistinctly located inside or outside the…
This study investigates the representations and understandings of electric fields expressed by Chinese high school students 15 to 16 years old who have not received high school level physics instruction. The physics education research…
When learning a new motor behavior, e.g. reaching in a force field, the nervous system builds an internal representation. Examining how subsequent reaches in unpracticed directions generalize reveals this representation. Though it is the…
We investigate student understanding of energy and momentum concepts at the level of introductory physics by designing and administering a 25-item multiple choice test and conducting individual interviews. We find that most students have…
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…
The aim of this study is to investigate the decisions and reasoning of undergraduate students when choosing simple measurement instruments in an introductory physics laboratory course. For this study, we have developed a questionnaire and…
Reinforcement Learning faces an important challenge in partial observable environments that has long-term dependencies. In order to learn in an ambiguous environment, an agent has to keep previous perceptions in a memory. Earlier memory…
Although Physics is the same worldwide, students belonging to different learning systems as well as different cultural environments may develop different styles of approaching and reasoning out Physics problems. In a first experiment we…
The problem of designing a flux observer for magnetic field electromechanical systems from noise corrupted measurements of currents and voltages is addressed in this paper. Imposing a constraint on the systems magnetic energy function,…
We present data from a between-student study on student response to questions on Newton's Third Law given throughout the academic year. The study, conducted at Rochester Institute of Technology, involved students from the first and third of…
Development of conceptual multiple-choice tests related to a particular physics topic is important for designing research-based learning tools to reduce the difficulties. We explore the difficulties that the advanced undergraduate and…
The approach to the concept of electromagnetic induction in physics education can present challenges, particularly regarding its distance from students' everyday experiences. The functioning of an electric guitar pickup can serve as an…
Investigations related to expertise in problem solving and ability to transfer learning from one context to another are important for developing strategies to help students perform more expert-like tasks. Here we analyze written responses…
Understanding Maxwell's equations in differential form is of great importance when studying the electrodynamic phenomena discussed in advanced electromagnetism courses. It is therefore necessary that students master the use of vector…
We describe the difficulties that advanced undergraduate and graduate students have with quantum measurement within the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics. We explore the possible origins of these difficulties by analyzing student…
We investigate if the visual representation of vectors can affect which methods students use to add them. We gave students one of four questions with different graphical representations, asking students to add the same two vectors. For…