Related papers: Student Difficulties with Boundary Conditions in E…
Boundary conditions (BCs) are considered as an important topic that advanced physics under- graduates are expected to understand and apply. We report findings from an investigation of student difficulties using boundary conditions (BCs) in…
This paper re-centres the discussion of student learning in physics to focus on context. In order to do so, a theoretically-motivated understanding of context is developed. Given a well-defined notion of context, data from a novel…
We give a general family of electromagnetic boundary conditions applicable to arbitrary space--time interfaces between electromagnetic media, which include the known space--only and time--only boundary conditions as special cases. These…
Formally investigating the sources of students' difficulties around specific subjects is crucial for developing appropriate strategies to help students. We have been studying difficulties in understanding magnetism encountered by students…
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…
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…
Measurement uncertainty is an important topic in the undergraduate laboratory curriculum. Previous research on student thinking about experimental measurement uncertainty has focused primarily on introductory-level students' procedural…
When education researchers describe newly developed curricular materials, they typically concentrate on the research base behind their design, and the efficacy of the final products, but do not highlight the initial stages of creating the…
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…
Accurate modeling of boundary conditions is crucial in computational physics. The ever increasing use of neural networks as surrogates for physics-related problems calls for an improved understanding of boundary condition treatment, and its…
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.…
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…
We report results from a study designed to identify links between undergraduate students' views about experimental physics and their engagement in multiweek projects in lab courses. Using surveys and interviews, we explored whether students…
Invariance in duality transformation, the self-dual property, has important applications in electromagnetic engineering. In the present paper, the problem of most general linear and local boundary conditions with self-dual property is…
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…
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'…
One of the objectives of the undergraduate physics curriculum is for students to become aware of the connections between formal physical principles and personal experience. However, research has shown that awareness of connections between…
We report on several specific student difficulties regarding the Second Law of Thermodynamics in the context of heat engines within upper-division undergraduates thermal physics courses. Data come from ungraded written surveys, graded…
A set of four scalar conditions involving normal components of the fields D and B and their normal derivatives at a planar surface is introduced, among which different pairs can be chosen to represent possible boundary conditions for 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…