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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…
We developed a survey to probe student understanding of quantum mechanics concepts at the beginning of graduate instruction. The survey was administered to 202 graduate students in physics enrolled in first-year quantum mechanics courses…
Upper-level, undergraduate quantum mechanics (QM) is widely considered a difficult subject with many varied approaches to teaching it and considerable variation in content coverage. For example, two common approaches to undergraduate QM…
Learning advanced physics, in general, is challenging not only due to the increased mathematical sophistication but also because one must continue to build on all of the prior knowledge acquired at the introductory and intermediate levels.…
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…
We describe the difficulties that advanced undergraduate and graduate students have with quantum measurement within the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics. We explore the possible origins of these difficulties by analyzing student…
We describe a study focusing on students' and faculty members' reasoning about problems of differing cognitive complexity related to the double-slit experiment (DSE) with single particles. In the first phase of the study, students in…
Very little is known about how the nature of expertise in introductory and advanced courses compares in knowledge-rich domains such as physics. We develop a framework to compare the similarities and differences between learning and patterns…
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…
We discuss the categorization of 20 quantum mechanics problems by physics professors and undergraduate students from two honors-level quantum mechanics courses. Professors and students were asked to categorize the problems based upon…
Students' difficulties in quantum mechanics may be the result of unproductive framing and not a fundamental inability to solve the problems or misconceptions about physics content. We observed groups of students solving quantum mechanics…
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…
This study presents a review of the current state of research on teaching quantum mechanics in secondary and lower undergraduate education. A conceptual approach to quantum mechanics is being implemented in more and more introductory…
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…
Research-validated multiple-choice questions comprise an easy-to-implement instructional tool that serves to scaffold student learning and formatively assess students knowledge. We present findings from the implementation, in consecutive…
Understanding instructor attitudes and approaches to teaching quantum mechanics can be helpful in developing research-based learning tools. Here we discuss the findings from a survey in which 13 instructors reflected on issues related to…
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…
We present a method to study engagement level uniformity in a class of students. We validate our method by comparing two semesters taught using different methods in a physics and mathematics course. The first semester used conventional…
Quantum mechanics is challenging even for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Dirac notation is a convenient notation used extensively in quantum mechanics. We have been investigating the difficulties that the advanced…
Computational physics is a key part of what it means to do physics in the twenty-first century. However, upper division computational physics remains a largely understudied area. We set out to understand the experiences of students in an…