Related papers: Faculty survey on upper-division thermal physics c…
We address four main areas in which graduate quantum mechanics education can be improved: course content, textbook, teaching methods, and assessment tools. We report on a three year longitudinal study at the Colorado School of Mines using…
The current work aims to better understand student course experiences for those who reported negative perceptions in introductory physics. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 24 students who reported negative perceptions of their…
To help faculty use research-based materials in a more significant way, we learn about their perceived needs and desires and use this information to suggest ways for the Physics Education Research community to address these needs. When…
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 prior work has shown that…
A survey was developed to probe student understanding of quantum mechanics at the beginning of graduate instruction. The survey was administered to 202 physics graduate students enrolled in first-year quantum mechanics courses from seven…
In this work, the teaching content of a theoretical-chemistry (TC) course is reformed, establishing a theoretical contents from micro- to macro-system, and comprehensively introducing the theory of chemical reaction to undergraduate…
This review article provides the basics and discusses some important applications of thermal field theory, namely the combination of statistical mechanics and relativistic quantum field theory. In a first part the fundamentals are covered:…
An essential companion to the development and advancement of the field of Particle Physics is a strong program in physics education at all levels, that can attract entry level students across the full demographic spectrum and provide them…
Physics Education Research (PER) is a global endeavour, with a wealth of work performed at a variety of institutions worldwide. However, results from research into undergraduate physics laboratory courses is often difficult to compare due…
Thermodynamics could be seen as an expression of physics at a high epistemic level. As such, its potential as an inductive bias to help machine learning procedures attain accurate and credible predictions has been recently realized in many…
The pursuit of knowledge in particle physics requires constant learning. As new tools become available, new theories are developed, and physicists search for new answers with ever-evolving methods. However, it is the case that formal…
Computational elements in thermodynamics have become increasingly important in contemporary chemical-engineering research and practice. However, traditional thermodynamics instruction provides little exposure to computational…
Recruiting and retaining highly qualified physics and physical science teachers is critical for maintaining America's global competitiveness. Unfortunately, only one third of the high school teachers in physics have a degree in physics and…
The physics community explores and explains the physical world through a blend of theoretical and experimental studies. The future of physics as a discipline depends on training of students in both the theoretical and experimental aspects…
Technological and scientific advances have given rise to an era in which coherent quantum-mechanical phenomena can be probed and experimentally-realised over unprecedented timescales in condensed matter physics. In turn, scientific interest…
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"…
This chapter introduces thermal density functional theory, starting from the ground-state theory and assuming a background in quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics. We review the foundations of density functional theory (DFT) by…
As a result of the deep modifications of the French physics and chemistry curricula in upper secondary school during these last three years, the physics department of the Universit\'e Paris Diderot (France) wished to develop a renovation…
Students often begin physics courses with misconceptions rooted in everyday experience and intuition, which can be resistant to change. While research has identified strategies for addressing misconceptions across physics, it remains…
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…