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Uncertainty is an important and fundamental concept in physics education. Students are often first exposed to uncertainty in introductory labs, expand their knowledge across lab courses, and then are introduced to quantum mechanical…
We describe a neural-based method for generating exact or approximate solutions to differential equations in the form of mathematical expressions. Unlike other neural methods, our system returns symbolic expressions that can be interpreted…
Integrating computation into physics teaching is a curricular move that, at present, has been predominately studied for its cognitive impacts. However, if this modality of instruction shifts how students engage with physics, we argue there…
Ideograms (symbols that represent a word or idea) have great communicative value. They refer to concepts in a simple manner, easing the understanding of related ideas. Moreover, ideograms can simplify the often cumbersome notation used in…
The article deals with the problem of intellectual development of students in learning of physics by means of computer simulation. The main objectives of teaching computer simulation in learning of physics is the general outlook…
We describe how graduate students categorize introductory mechanics problems based on the similarity of their solutions. Graduate students were asked at the end of a teaching assistant training class to categorize problems from their own…
This is a report of a course on modern physics designed and taught to undergraduate science and engineering students in the Spring of 2013. The course, meant for freshmen, attempts to integrate statistical mechanics into non-classical…
Physics education research has probed for the relevance of physics in students' everyday lives. Attitudinal and epistemological surveys have asked students if they think of or use physics in their daily lives. We have previously documented…
Physics has a bad press: it is seen by a majority of people as a boring discipline ever since their High School days. There is no glamour to it, just toil and pain, and for many who engaged in it, the end sight is often unemployment. Could…
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…
Physics lab courses are an essential part of the physics undergraduate curriculum. Learning goals for these classes often include the ability to interpret measurements and uncertainties. The Physics Measurement Questionnaire (PMQ) is an…
While there are many applications of ML to scientific problems that look promising, visuals can be deceiving. Using numerical analysis techniques, we rigorously quantify the accuracy, convergence rates, and generalization bounds of certain…
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…
We address the question "How do students make sense of Physics from the point of view of constituting physics knowledge?". A phenomenographic study is described as a result of which we present six qualitatively different ways in which…
Students must learn effective problem solving strategies in order to develop expertise in physics. Effective problem solving strategies include a conceptual analysis of the problem followed by planning of the solution, and then…
Motivated by the recent 10 million dollar AIMO challenge, this paper targets the problem of finding all functions conforming to a given specification. This is a popular problem at mathematical competitions and it brings about a number of…
Several concrete examples in quantum information are discussed to demonstrate the importance of proper modeling that relates the mathematical description to real-world applications. In particular, it is shown that some commonly accepted…
The world of mathematics is often considered abstract, with its symbols, concepts, and topics appearing unrelated to physical objects. However, it is important to recognize that the development of mathematics is fundamentally influenced by…
With the rise of large language models such as ChatGPT, interest has grown in understanding how these tools influence learning in STEM education, including physics. This study explores how students use ChatGPT during a physics…
The role of mathematics in physical sciences is discussed, particularly how higher mathematics found applications in empirical problems. Several examples are given to illustrate this role.