Related papers: Investigating Student Difficulties with Dirac Nota…
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…
The mindset literature is a longstanding area of psychological research focused on beliefs about intelligence, response to challenge, and goals for learning (Dweck, 2000). However, the mindset literature's applicability to the context of…
Despite the prevalence of physics education research literature related to problem solving, recent studies have illustrated that opportunities for ``authentic'' problem solving -- conceptualized as making decisions with limited information…
We investigate upper-division student difficulties with direct integration in multiple contexts involving the calculation of a potential from a continuous distribution (e.g., mass, charge, or current). Integration is a tool that has been…
In this work, we have obtained the solutions of the (1 + 1) dimensional Dirac equation on a gravitational background within the generalized uncertainty principle. We have shown that how minimal length parameters effect the Dirac particle in…
The Quantum Mechanics Conceptual Survey (QMCS) is a 12-question survey of students' conceptual understanding of quantum mechanics. It is intended to be used to measure the relative effectiveness of different instructional methods in modern…
Diagrams are ubiquitous in physics, especially in physics education and physics problem solving. Problem solvers may generate diagrams to orient to a scenario, to organize information, to directly extract an answer, or as a tool of…
Science is an inherently quantitative endeavor, and general education science courses are taken by a majority of college students. As such, they are a powerful venue for advancing students' skills and attitudes toward mathematics. This…
Symbolic calculators like Mathematica are becoming more commonplace among upper level physics students. The presence of such a powerful calculator can couple strongly to the type of mathematical reasoning students employ. It does not merely…
Many students in upper-division physics courses struggle with the mathematically sophisticated tools and techniques that are required for advanced physics content. We have developed an analytical framework to assist instructors and…
Students of quantum mechanics encounter discrete quantum numbers in a somewhat incoherent and bewildering number of ways. For each physical system studied, quantum numbers seem to be introduced in its own specific way, some enumerating from…
An important goal of graduate physics core courses is to help students develop expertise in problem solving and improve their reasoning and meta-cognitive skills. We explore the conceptual difficulties of physics graduate students by…
At the University of Colorado Boulder, as part of our broader efforts to transform middle- and upper-division physics courses, we research students' difficulties with particular concepts, methods, and tools in classical mechanics,…
We discuss an investigation of student difficulties with degenerate perturbation theory (DPT) carried out in advanced quantum mechanics courses by administering free-response and multiple-choice questions and conducting individual…
We consider the quantum simulation of relativistic quantum mechanics, as described by the Dirac equation and classical potentials, in trapped-ion systems. We concentrate on three problems of growing complexity. First, we study the…
A common learning goal for modern physics instructors is for students to recognize a difference between the experimental uncertainty of classical physics and the fundamental uncertainty of quantum mechanics. Our studies suggest this…
It has been found that quantum corrections can substantially affect the classical results of tracking for trajectories close to the separatrix. Hence the development of a basic formalism for obtaining the quantum maps for any particle beam…
Student learning in upper division thermal physics has not been studied to the same extent as in other courses like electromagnetism and quantum mechanics. Studies addressing reasoning and learning at the graduate level are even more…
We present a simple, accessible, yet rigorous outreach/educational program focused on quantum information science and technology for high-school and early undergraduate students. This program allows students to perform meaningful hands-on…
As the field of recommender systems has developed, authors have used a myriad of notations for describing the mathematical workings of recommendation algorithms. These notations ap-pear in research papers, books, lecture notes, blog posts,…