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Quantum Information Science (QIS) is a vast, diverse, and abstract field. In consequence, learners face many challenges. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education research has found that visualizations are valuable…
We are trying to identify resources students are using to reason in quantum mechanics. In this process we realize students must have not only the right resources available but sophisticated for evaluating and controlling their thought…
Quantum simulators hold promise for solving many intractable problems. However, a major challenge in quantum simulation, and quantum computation in general, is to solve problems with limited physical hardware. Currently, this challenge is…
The Test of Understanding Graphs in Kinematics (TUG-K) is a multiple choice test developed by Beichner to assess students' understanding of kinematics graphs. Many of the items on the TUG-K have strong distractor choices which correspond to…
Identifying and understanding student difficulties with physics content in a wide variety of topical areas is an active research area within the PER community. In many cases, physics topics appear multiple times in different contexts across…
High-stakes exams play a large role in determining an introductory physics student's final grade. These exams have been shown to be inequitable, often to the detriment of students identifying with groups historically marginalized in…
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…
The traditional approach to accelerator optics, based mainly on classical mechanics, is working excellently from the practical point of view. However, from the point of view of curiosity, as well as with a view to explore quantitatively the…
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…
Recent days have witnessed significant interests in applying quantum-enhanced techniques for solving a variety of machine learning tasks. Variational methods that use quantum resources of imperfect quantum devices with the help of classical…
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…
Applications of the Dirac equation with an anomalous magnetic moment are considered for description of characteristics of electrons, muons and quarks. The Dirac equation with four-dimensional scalar and vector potentials is reduced to a…
Separation of variables can be a powerful technique for solving many of the partial differential equations that arise in physics contexts. Upper-division physics students encounter this technique in multiple topical areas including…
Many undergraduate students of engineering and the exact sciences have difficulty with their mathematics courses due to insufficient proficiency in what we in this paper have termed clear thinking. We believe that this lack of proficiency…
Teaching assistants (TAs) are often responsible for grading in introductory physics courses at large research universities. Their grading practices can shape students' approaches to problem solving and learning. Physics education research…
The Dirac oscillator is an exactly soluble model recently introduced in the context of many particle models in relativistic quantum mechanics. The model has been also considered as an interaction term for modelling quark confinement in…
An assumed attribute of expert physicists is that they learn readily from their own mistakes. Experts are unlikely to make the same mistakes when asked to solve a problem a second time, especially if they have had access to a correct…
Learning quantum mechanics is challenging, even for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students. Research-validated interactive tutorials that build on students' prior knowledge can be useful tools to enhance student learning. We have…
An earlier investigation found that the performance of advanced students in a quantum mechanics course did not automatically improve from midterm to final exam on identical problems even when they were provided the correct solutions and…
We discuss the categorization of 20 quantum mechanics problems by 6 physics professors and 22 undergraduate students from two honors-level quantum mechanics courses. Professors and students were asked to categorize the problems based upon…