Related papers: Student understanding of the Boltzmann factor
In the rapidly growing literature on explanation algorithms, it often remains unclear what precisely these algorithms are for and how they should be used. In this position paper, we argue for a novel and pragmatic perspective: Explainable…
Science students must deal with the errors inherent to all physical measurements and be conscious of the necessity to express their as a best estimate and a range of uncertainty. Errors are routinely classified as statistical or systematic.…
Proficiency with calculating, reporting, and understanding measurement uncertainty is a nationally recognized learning outcome for undergraduate physics lab courses. The Physics Measurement Questionnaire (PMQ) is a research-based assessment…
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…
Learning to create, use, and evaluate models is a central element of becoming a scientist. In physics, we often begin an analysis of a complex system with highly simplified or toy models. In introductory physics classes, we tend to use them…
Making meaning with math in physics requires blending physical conceptual knowledge with mathematical symbology. Students in introductory physics classes often struggle with this, but it is an essential component of learning how to think…
Uncertainty is an important concept in physics laboratory instruction. However, little work has examined how students reason about uncertainty beyond the introductory (intro) level. In this work we aimed to compare intro and beyond-intro…
Symbolic equations are one of the many representations used in physics. Understanding these representations is important for students because they are how students access knowledge in physics. In this paper I build off of the work by Redish…
A survey was developed to probe student understanding of quantum mechanics at the beginning of graduate instruction. The survey was administered to 202 physics graduate students enrolled in first-year quantum mechanics courses from seven…
The Boltzmann distribution (the most probable distribution) is one of the most important concepts used in physics, chemistry and biology. Suppose we put the system initially in one of the less probable state then the system will find the…
We study the possibility of applying statistical mechanics to generally covariant quantum theories with a vanishing Hamiltonian. We show that (under certain appropiate conditions) this makes sense, in spite of the absence of a notion of…
Partial derivatives are used in a variety of different ways within physics. Most notably, thermodynamics uses partial derivatives in ways that students often find confusing. As part of a collaboration with mathematics faculty, we are at the…
Bootstrapping and other resampling methods are increasingly appearing in the textbooks and curricula of courses that introduce undergraduate students to statistical methods. In order to teach the bootstrap well, students and instructors…
The spreadsheet has been used by the business community for many years and yet still raises a number of significant concerns. As educators our concern is to try to develop the students skills in both the development of spreadsheets and in…
Experiments performed in the Physics Laboratory play a significant role in understanding the concepts taught in the theory. A good accompanying laboratory manual serves as a concise guideline which students can use to complete the…
The issue of the thermodynamics of a system of distinguishable particles is discussed in this paper. In constructing the statistical mechanics of distinguishable particles from the definition of Boltzmann entropy, it is found that the…
The undergraduate curriculum in statistics and data science is undergoing changes to accommodate new methods, newly interested students, and the changing role of statistics in society. Because of this, it is more important than ever that…
We investigate the dynamics of student behaviors (posture, gesture, vocal register, visual focus) and the substance of their reasoning during collaborative work on inquiry-based physics tutorials. Scherr has characterized student activity…
Students in introductory physics struggle with vector algebra and these challenges are often associated with contextual and representational features of the problems. Performance on problems about cross product direction is particularly…
The quantum mechanical commutation relations, which are directly related to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, have a crucial importance for understanding the quantum mechanics of students. During undergraduate level courses, the…