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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…
In this note we report on an implementation of discovery-oriented problems in courses on Real Analysis and Differential Equations. We explain a type of task-design that gives students the opportunity to conjecture, refute and prove. What is…
Classroom response systems (CRSs) can be potent tools for teaching physics. Their efficacy, however, depends strongly on the quality of the questions used. Creating effective questions is difficult, and differs from creating exam and…
Educational research has shown that narratives are useful tools that can help young students make sense of scientific phenomena. Based on previous research, I argue that narratives can also become tools for high school students to make…
The traditional approach to studying student understanding presents a question and uses the student answers to make inferences about their knowledge. However, this method does not capture the range of possible alternative ideas available to…
A common problem in teaching Physics in secondary school is due to the gap in terms of difficulty between the physical concepts and the mathematical tools which are necessary to study them quantitatively. Advanced statistical estimators are…
A recent physics challenge shows a circuit, where a voltmeter is connected in series. Indeed, real voltmeters have finite input resistance, therefore one may think that they can be used as resistors. In addition, voltmeters measure the…
Students entering engineering in universities of applied sciences were tested to see whether they understood easy Science problems within the first week of the first semester. The test comprised of mathematics and physics questions in both…
This paper reports on a study of student understanding of induced EMF. Students enrolled in a physics lab course completed a pretest and posttest that included questions about induced EMF. Following the posttest, some of those students…
The Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM) is a multiple-choice survey that contains a variety of electricity and magnetism concepts from Coulomb's law to Faraday's law at the level of introductory physics used to help inform…
Helping students learn why Gauss' law can or cannot be easily applied to determine the strength of the electric field at various points for a particular charge distribution, and then helping them learn to determine the shape of the Gaussian…
We investigate student understanding of energy and momentum concepts at the level of introductory physics by designing and administering a 25-item multiple choice test and conducting individual interviews. We find that most students have…
As part of ongoing investigations into student learning in advanced undergraduate courses, we have developed a conceptual assessment tool for upper-division electrodynamics (E&M II): the Colorado UppeR-division ElectrodyNamics Test…
Developing expertise in physics requires appropriate integration and assimilation of physics and mathematics. Instructors and students often describe physics courses in terms of their emphasis on conceptual and quantitative problem-solving.…
Conceptual inventory surveys are routinely used in education research to identify student learning needs and assess instructional practices. Students might not fully engage with these instruments because of the low stakes attached to them.…
Physics faculty consider the photoelectric effect important, but many erroneously believe it is easy for students to understand. We have developed curriculum on this topic including an interactive computer simulation, interactive lectures…
Identifying and understanding student difficulties with physics content in a wide variety of topical areas is an active research area within the PER community. In many cases, physics topics appear multiple times in different contexts across…
Models of physical systems are used to explain and predict experimental results and observations. The Modeling Framework for Experimental Physics describes the process by which physicists revise their models to account for the newly…
We present a study of student understanding of energy in quantum mechanical tunneling and barrier penetration. This paper will focus on student responses to two questions that were part of a test given in class to two modern physics classes…
Electronic devices exhibit changes in electrical resistance over time at varying rates, depending on the configuration of certain components. Since measuring overall electrical resistance requires partial disassembly, only a limited number…