Related papers: Difficult Problems Having Easy Solutions
Many mathematicians find mathematics aesthetically beautiful and even comparable to art forms such as music or painting. On the other hand, every year a great number of school students leave mathematics with total disillusionment and…
This chapter presents a brief review of complexity research in mathematics education. We argue how research on complexity, as it pertains to mathematics education, can be viewed as an epistemological discourse, an historical discourse, a…
An introduction to applied mathematics written for students in engineering and science. Focus is on a rigorous presentation that also builds understanding by discussion, analogy, and examples. Discussion of concepts involved in modeling…
We discuss a case study of the influence of epistemology on learning for a student in an introductory college physics course. An analysis of videotaped class work, written work, and interviews indicates that many of the student's…
This manuscript is written for students in introductory physics classes to address some of the common difficulties and misconceptions of the normal force, especially the relationship between normal and friction forces. Accordingly, it is…
Hyperbolic problems can at times be solved employing symbolic arguments. This is especially true for the construction of forward (and backward) fundamental solutions. We formulate a corresponding abstract scheme and illustrate its…
As robots and other intelligent agents move from simple environments and problems to more complex, unstructured settings, manually programming their behavior has become increasingly challenging and expensive. Often, it is easier for a…
In this paper, we discuss the question whether a physical "simplification" of a model makes it always easier to study, at least from a mathematical and numerical point of view. To this end, we give different examples showing that these…
Students' difficulties in quantum mechanics may be the result of unproductive framing rather than a fundamental inability to solve the problems or misconceptions about physics content. Using the theoretical lens of epistemological framing,…
The following is the very first set of the series in 'Problems and Solutions in a Graduate Course in Classical Electrodynamics'. In each of the sets of the problems we intend to follow a theme, which not only makes it unique but also deals…
The design of a serious game is presented that served as an instrument to motivate and aid to Physics education using active and ludic learning, specifically the topic of free fall of objects, with diverse educational purposes, first to…
An important goal of graduate physics core courses is to help students develop expertise in problem solving and improve their reasoning and meta-cognitive skills. We explore the conceptual difficulties of physics graduate students by…
Holography as a subject is neglected largely in current physics lessons and in school books. Even though this topic might be complex, it is applicable and viable in the world that we live in. Holography lends itself to further develop…
Dimensional analysis is a simple qualitative method for determining essential connections between physical quantities. It is applicable to a multitude of physics problems, many of which canbe introduced early on in a university physics…
In-context learning (ICL) can significantly enhance the complex reasoning capabilities of large language models (LLMs), with the key lying in the selection and ordering of demonstration examples. Previous methods typically relied on simple…
Almost all theories of physics have expressed physical laws by means of differential equations. One can ask: why differential equations? What is special about them? This article addresses these questions and is presented as an inquiry-based…
Some basic features of confinement are reviewed, in particular the symmetry patterns of the dual dynamics. Open problems and possible directions of progress are discussed.
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…
You can invent striking and challenging problems with unique solution by building some symmetry into functional equations. Some are suitable for high school; others could generate college-level projects involving computer algebra. The…
We return to the subject of stability of infinite time asymptotics of kinetic equations. We found a model which is simpler than those studied previously and which shows unstable behavior corresponding to our arguments to appear elsewhere,…