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The motion of a charged particle over a conducting plate is damped by Ohmic resistance to image currents. This interaction between the particle and the plate must also produce decoherence, which can be detected by examining interference…
We investigate student comfort with the material in an upper-division spins-first quantum mechanics course. Pre-lecture surveys probing students' comfort were administered weekly, in which students assigned themselves a "discomfort level"…
The fact that the capacitance coefficients for a set of conductors are geometrical factors is derived in most electricity and magnetism textbooks. We present an alternative derivation based on Laplace's equation that is accessible for an…
Six specific modes of reasoning about ratio and proportion have been delineated as a means of operationalizing expert practice. These modes stem from consideration of how physicists reason in context, are informed by prior work in physics…
Teaching about measurements and showing examples of instruments' non-ideal behaviour are important in physics education. Digital multimeter input impedance analysis is perfect for this, since these instruments are easily available, precise…
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 cyclic format of the undergraduate physics curriculum depends on students' ability to recall and utilize material covered in prior courses in order to reliably build on that knowledge in later courses. However, there is evidence to…
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…
Incorporating computer programming exercises into introductory physics is a delicate task that involves a number of choices that may have an effect on student learning. We present a "hybrid" approach that speaks to a number of common…
We use the Survey of Thermodynamic Processes and First and Second Laws-Long (STPFaSL-Long), a research-based survey instrument with 78 items at the level of introductory physics, to investigate introductory and advanced students'…
With inspiration from the classic study by Chi, Feltovich, and Glaser [1], we asked introductory physics students in three introductory physics classes to categorize mechanics problems based upon similarity of solutions. To evaluate the…
Electromagnetism (E&M) is often challenging for students enrolled in introductory college-level physics courses. Compared to mechanics, the mathematics of E&M is more sophisticated and the representations are more abstract. Furthermore,…
Theory of Relativity (Special and General) is one of the most influential theories of the 20th century and has changed the way we view the world. It is part of many undergraduate curriculums and it is often suggested that it should be…
We examined how introductory physics students' attitudes and approaches to problem solving compare to those of introductory astronomy students, using a previously validated survey, the Attitudes and Approaches to Problem Solving (AAPS)…
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…
In this paper we describe a couple of exercises that we developed for our online first-year EM course. The labs that we describe are focused on basic concepts from circuit analysis, namely Ohm's law and charging a capacitor with a constant…
Contamination of signals by pickup and interference is a recurrent problem in physics experiments, the suppression of which consumes much time and effort. Techniques are presented which allow the time-domain assessment of mitigation…
Upper-division physics students spend much of their time solving problems. In addition to their basic skills and background, their epistemic framing can form an important part of their ability to learn physics from these problems.…
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…
Instruction in quantum mechanics is becoming increasingly important as the field is not only a key part of modern physics research, but is also important for emerging technologies. However, many students regard quantum mechanics as a…