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A strategy is suggested for teaching mathematically literate students, with no background in physics, just enough quantum mechanics for them to understand and develop algorithms in quantum computation and quantum information theory.…
We discuss the development, implementation, and assessment of a course for science undergraduates designed to help them develop an awareness and a deeper appreciation of the intellectual demands of physics teaching. The course focused on…
Studies examining gender differences in introductory physics show a consensus when it comes to a gender gap on conceptual assessments; however, the story is not as clear when it comes to differences in gendered performance on exams. This…
Instilling good laboratory working attitudes in students is a difficult but very important task, especially in the first level courses. The introduction of a grade, based on the observation of work practices during laboratory sessions, can…
Mechanical TA 2 (MTA2) is an open source web-based peer grading application that leverages trusted TA graders to incentivize high-quality peer review. A previous, prototype implementation of MTA proved the value of the concept, but was…
We introduce PHYSICS, a comprehensive benchmark for university-level physics problem solving. It contains 1297 expert-annotated problems covering six core areas: classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics and statistical…
This work aims to understand how effective the typical admissions criteria used in physics are at identifying students who will complete the PhD. Through a multivariate statistical analysis of a sample that includes roughly one in eight…
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…
Helping students become proficient problem-solvers is one of the primary goals of physics courses. In part 1 of this article, we summarized the vast research on problem-solving relevant for physics instruction, and here we discuss a…
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…
Inequities in student access to trigonometry and calculus are often associated with racial and socioeconomic privilege, and often influence introductory physics course performance. To mitigate these disparities in student preparedness, we…
Development of conceptual multiple-choice tests related to a particular physics topic is important for designing research-based learning tools to reduce the difficulties. We explore the difficulties that the advanced undergraduate and…
One attribute of experts is that they are likely to learn from their own mistakes. Experts are unlikely to make the same mistakes when asked to solve a problem a second time, especially if they had access to a correct solution. Here, we…
Studying for physics exams can be difficult and stressful, especially during a student's introductory year in physics. For students who do not plan to major in physics, the desire to do well is based less on understanding concepts and more…
An analysis of 1,955 physics graduate students from 19 PhD programs shows that undergraduate grade point average predicts graduate grades and PhD completion more effectively than GRE scores. Students' undergraduate GPA (UGPA) and GRE…
Quantum Computing is an exciting field that draws from information theory, computer science, mathematics, and quantum physics to process information in fundamentally new ways. There is an ongoing race to develop practical quantum computers…
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.…
Physics teaching in engineering programmes poses discipline-specific demands that intertwine conceptual modelling, experimental inquiry, and computational analysis. This study examines nine teaching competences for physics instruction…
The lack of diversity and the under-performance of underrepresented students in STEM courses have been the focus of researchers in the last decade. In particular, many hypotheses have been put forth for the reasons for the…
In previous work we analyzed databases for 95 classes to show that the percent grade scale was correlated with a much higher student fail rate than the 4.0 grade scale. This paper builds on this work and investigates equity gaps occurring…