Related papers: Students' epistemological framing in quantum mecha…
Quantum mechanics is difficult to learn because it is counterintuitive, hard to visualize, mathematically challenging, and abstract. The Physics Education Technology (PhET) Project, known for its interactive computer simulations for…
Computation is intertwined with essentially all aspects of physics research and is invaluable for physicists' careers. Despite its disciplinary importance, integration of computation into physics education remains a challenge and, moreover,…
The major conceptual difficulties of quantum mechanics are analyzed. They are: the notion "wave-particle", the probabilistic interpretation of the Schroedinger wave \psi-function and hence the probability amplitude and its phase, long-range…
This work examines student meaning-making in undergraduate physics problem-solving. We use a social semiotic perspective to sketch a theoretical framework. The social semiotic approach focuses on all types of meaning-making practices that…
Quantum computers take advantage of interfering quantum alternatives in order to handle problems that might be too time consuming with algorithms based on classical logic. Developing quantum computers requires new ways of thinking beyond…
The success of the abstract model of computation, in terms of bits, logical operations, programming language constructs, and the like, makes it easy to forget that computation is a physical process. Our cherished notions of computation and…
Merging disciplines has led to incredible learnings and breakthroughs throughout history, including the discovery of quantum computing: a cross between computation and quantum physics. In this paper, I will discuss how we can cross quantum…
Significant attention in the PER community has been paid to student cognition and reasoning processes in undergraduate quantum mechanics. Until recently, however, these same topics have remained largely unexplored in the context of emerging…
There is a growing consensus that physics majors need to learn computational skills, but many departments are still devoid of computation in their physics curriculum. Some departments may lack the resources or commitment to create a…
Quantum learning paradigms address the question of how best to harness conceptual elements of quantum mechanics and information processing to improve operability and functionality of a computing system for specific tasks through experience.…
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…
An established body of literature shows that a student's affect can be linked to her epistemological stance [1]. In this literature, the epistemology is generally taken as a belief or stance toward a discipline, and the affective stance…
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…
Quantum mechanics---the theory describing the fundamental workings of nature---is famously counterintuitive: it predicts that a particle can be in two places at the same time, and that two remote particles can be inextricably and…
Experiments in cognitive science and decision theory show that the ways in which people combine concepts and make decisions cannot be described by classical logic and probability theory. This has serious implications for applied disciplines…
This work concerns some issues about the interplay of standard and geometric (Hamiltonian) approaches to finite-dimensional quantum mechanics, formulated in the projective space. Our analysis relies upon the notion and the properties of…
Undergraduate quantum mechanics focuses on teaching through a wavefunction approach in the position-space representation. This leads to a differential equation perspective for teaching the material. However, we know that abstract…
The paper describes two general problems encountered in computational assignments at the introductory level. First, novice students often treat computer code as almost magic incantations, and like novices in many fields, have trouble…
One finding of cognitive research is that people do not automatically acquire usable knowledge by spending lots of time on task. Because students' knowledge hierarchy is more fragmented, "knowledge chunks" are smaller than those of experts.…
We are at the dawn of the second quantum revolution, where our ability to create and control individual quantum systems is poised to drive transformative advancements in basic science, computation, and everyday life. However, quantum theory…