Related papers: Making Sense of How Students Make Sense of Mechani…
Students in interviews on a wave physics topic give answers through embodied actions which connect their understanding of the physics to other common experiences. When answering a question about wavepulses propagating along a long taut…
Student learning of sound waves can be helped through the creation of group-learning classroom materials whose development and design rely on explicit investigations into student understanding. We describe reasoning in terms of sets of…
Detailed investigations of student reasoning show that students approach the topic of wave physics using both event-like and object-like descriptions of wavepulses, but primarily focus on object properties in their reasoning. Student…
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…
Power systems usually go through electromagnetic and electromechanical transient processes after different disturbances. Learning the characteristics and the differences between them are important but not easy for students majoring in power…
With an investigation into how students in a physics Master of science program make sense of their whole first year study experience in one of the years following a programme reform, we try to offer insights and advice to consider when…
Introductory calculus-based physics textbooks state that electromagnetic waves are transverse and list many of their properties, but most such textbooks do not bring forth arguments why this is so. Both physical and theoretical arguments…
Instruction in quantum mechanics is becoming increasingly important as the field is not only a key part of modern physics research, but is also important for emerging technologies. However, many students regard quantum mechanics as a…
Starting from the wave equation for a medium with material properties that vary periodically, we study a system of recurrence relations that describe propagation of wave packets that oscillate on the microscale (i.e. on lengths of the order…
For steady-state and some other types of mechanical waves of an arbitrary form, intensity and nature, propagating in a free uniform waveguide, we present the following. Relations for the axial momentum as it directly follows from the…
We describe an extracurricular learning path on waves focused on energy transfer. The advantages of introducing mechanical waves by using the Shive wave machine and laboratory activities are presented. Laboratories are realized by inquiry,…
We discuss "the plane wave approximation" to quantum mechanical scattering using simple one-dimensional examples. The central points of the paper are that (a) plane waves should be thought of as infinitely wide wave packets, and (b) the…
Students in introductory calculus-based physics not only have difficulty understanding the fundamental physical concepts, they often have difficulty relating those concepts to the mathematics they have learned in math courses. This produces…
Researchers in physics education have advocated both for including modeling in science classrooms as well as promoting student engagement with sensemaking. These two processes facilitate the generation of new knowledge by connecting to…
An investigation on student understanding of waves is performed during an optional laboratory realized in informal extracurricular way with few, interested and talented pupils. The background and smart intuitions of students rendered the…
Relativistic blast waves can be described by a mechanical model. In this model, the "blast" -- the compressed gas between the forward and reverse shocks -- is viewed as one hot body. Equations governing its dynamics are derived from…
In this paper we will argue that the superposition of waves can be calculated and taught in a simple way. We show, using the Gauss's method to sum an arithmetic sequence, how we can construct the superposition of waves - with different…
This pedagogical paper presents a comprehensive framework for interpreting dispersion relations across fundamental physical systems. We adopt a novel approach that starts from the mathematical form $\omega(\mathbf{k})$ and systematically…
We reveal that the mechanical pulsation of locally synchronised particles is a generic route to propagate deformation waves. We consider a model of dense repulsive particles whose activity drives periodic change in size of each individual.…
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…