Related papers: Student difficulties with Boundary Conditions in e…
While the landscape of free-fermion phases has drastically been expanded in the last decades, recently novel multi-gap topological phases were proposed where groups of bands can acquire new invariants such as Euler class. As in conventional…
An extended thermal particle boundary condition is devised to more efficiently and accurately model laser-plasma interactions in overdense plasmas. Particle-in-cell simulations of such interactions require many particles per cell, and a…
Real physical systems are only understood, experimentally or theoretically, to a finite resolution so in their analysis there is generally an ignorance of possible short-range phenomena. It is also well-known that the boundary conditions of…
We discuss the clusters of resources that emerge when upper-division students write about electromagnetic fields in linear materials. The data analyzed for this paper comes from students' written tests in an upper-division electricity and…
We redesigned an advanced physics laboratory course to include a project component. The intention was to address learning outcomes such as modeling, design of experiments, teamwork, and developing technical skills in using apparatus and…
We investigate the difficulties that students in calculus-based introductory physics courses have with the concepts of symmetry, electric field, and electric flux which are important for applying Gauss's law. The determination of the…
The static limit of Lorentz-violating electrodynamics in vacuum and in media is investigated. Features of the general solutions include the need for unconventional boundary conditions and the mixing of electrostatic and magnetostatic…
While the positive outcomes of undergraduate research experiences (UREs) have been extensively categorized, the mechanisms for those outcomes are less understood. Through lightly structured focus group interviews, we have extracted the…
One of the objectives of the undergraduate physics curriculum is for students to become aware of the connections between formal physical principles and personal experience. However, research has shown that awareness of connections between…
Equations are about more than computing physical quantities or constructing formal models; they are also about understanding. The conceptual systems physicists use to think about nature are made from many different resources, formal and…
A basic question about regularity of Boltzmann solutions in the presence of physical boundary conditions has been open due to characteristic nature of the boundary as well as the non-local mixing of the collision operator. Consider the…
We developed a survey to probe student understanding of quantum mechanics concepts at the beginning of graduate instruction. The survey was administered to 202 graduate students in physics enrolled in first-year quantum mechanics courses…
The analytical solution of the boundary problem on behaviour (oscillations) of the electronic plasmas with arbitrary degree of degeneration of electronic gas in a slab of the conducting medium is received. The kinetic Vlasov---Boltzmann…
English Language Learners (ELLs) are frequently left on the periphery of classroom interactions. Due to misalignment of language skills, teachers and peers communicate with these students less often, decreasing the number of opportunities…
The Dirac delta function is a standard mathematical tool that appears repeatedly in the undergraduate physics curriculum in multiple topical areas including electrostatics, and quantum mechanics. While Dirac delta functions are often…
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…
Extended defects, including exposed surfaces and grain boundaries, are critical to the properties of polycrystalline solid electrolytes in all-solid-state batteries (ASSBs). These defects can significantly alter the mechanical and…
We discuss research involving the Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM) to evaluate one aspect of the pedagogical content knowledge of teaching assistants (TAs): the knowledge of introductory students' alternate conceptions…
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…
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…