相关论文: Student Reasoning About the Divergence of a Vector…
This paper explores middle-grade students' conceptions of median. Describes, where and why they struggle and provides learning trajectory to improve their understanding.
In their study of physics beyond the first year of University -- termed upper-division in the US, many of students' primary learning opportunities come from working long, complex back-of-the-book style problems, and from trying to develop…
The purpose of this sophomore-level textbook is twofold: to introduce the student to classical electrodynamics and, at the same time, explain in simple terms the quantum theory of conducting substances (in particular, the solid ones). The…
Drawing appropriate diagrams is a useful problem solving heuristic that can transform a given problem into a representation that is easier to exploit for solving it. A major focus while helping introductory physics students learn problem…
The Poynting vector is an invaluable tool for analysing electromagnetic problems. However, even a rigorous stress-energy tensor approach can still leave us with the question: is it best defined as $\Vec{E} \cross \Vec{H}$ or as $\Vec{D}…
The present article uncovers a common mistake in many college physics textbooks, specifically, on its presentation and interpretation about generation and propagation of electromagnetic waves. It is found that the electric field in the…
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…
Education is a goal-oriented field. But if we want to treat education scientifically so we can accumulate, evaluate, and refine what we learn, then we must develop a theoretical framework that is strongly rooted in objective observations…
Drawable electronics attract the attention of both educators and innovative circuit engineers due to their affordability and simplicity. This paper focuses on active learning activities related to conducting lines and presents extensible…
Teaching electromagnetism by demonstrating a practical application associated with learning content is an important teaching technique. Demonstrations are often performed through video-assisted procedures, and are usually limited to a…
We discuss an investigation of student difficulties with the corrections to the energy spectrum of the hydrogen atom for the strong and weak field Zeeman effects using degenerate perturbation theory. This investigation was carried out in…
A rigorous mathematical proof is given of a class of vector identities that provide a way to separate an arbitrary vector field (over a linear space) into the sum of a radial (i.e., pointing toward the radial unit vector) vector field,…
Standardized assessment tests that allow researchers to compare the performance of students under various curricula are highly desirable. There are several research-based conceptual tests that serve as instruments to assess and identify…
We investigated the difficulties that physics students in upper-level undergraduate quantum mechanics and graduate students after quantum and statistical mechanics core courses have with the Fermi energy, the Fermi-Dirac distribution and…
We study the problem of selecting a maximum-weight subgraph of a given graph such that the subgraph can be drawn within a prescribed drawing area subject to given non-uniform vertex sizes. We develop and analyze heuristics both for the…
At the University of Colorado Boulder, as part of our broader efforts to transform middle- and upper-division physics courses, we research students' difficulties with particular concepts, methods, and tools in classical mechanics,…
Reading scientific research papers is a skill that many students do not learn before entering PhD programs, but it is critical to their success. This paper describes our diagramming technique for teaching this skill, which helps them…
The ability to flexibly transform between different representations (e.g., from mathematical to graphical representations) of the same concept is a hallmark of expertise. Prior research suggests that many introductory physics students show…
Many students in upper-division physics courses struggle with the mathematically sophisticated tools and techniques that are required for advanced physics content. We have developed an analytical framework to assist instructors and…
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…