Uncertainty is an important and fundamental concept in physics education. Students are often first exposed to uncertainty in introductory labs, expand their knowledge across lab courses, and then are introduced to quantum mechanical uncertainty in upper-division courses. This study is part of a larger project evaluating student thinking about…

Data comparison problems are used in teaching and science education research that focuses on students' ability to compare datasets and their conceptual understanding of measurement uncertainties. However, the evaluation of students' decisions in these problems can pose a problem: e.g., students making a correct decision for the wrong reasons.…

Statistical mechanics has received limited attention in physics education research and remains a relatively underrepresented topic even in research on upper-division physics courses. The purpose of this study was to explore potential challenges that physics students encounter when they solve statistical mechanics problems in groups. Adopting a…

Conceptual approaches to contemporary physics topics pose many learning challenges. One factor influencing knowledge integration is a student's epistemic framing. Epistemic frames provide a context within which a particular situation is perceived, interpreted, and judged. The objective of this study is to explore secondary students' framings…

Student difficulties with making sense of graphs in physics have been thoroughly reported. In the study of one-dimensional waves, the issue is even trickier since the amplitude is a function of two variables (position and time). In this work, we investigate students' reasoning and difficulties with interpreting the graphical representation of the…

In this study, we have explored the effectiveness of two instructional approaches in the context of the motion of objects falling at terminal speed in the presence of air resistance. We ground these instructional approaches in dual-process theories of reasoning, which assert that human cognition relies on two thinking processes. Dual-process…

Because of the focus of introductory physics courses on improving students' problem-solving and reasoning skills, researchers in physics education have been developing and refining theoretical frameworks for how students reason through physics problems. Recently, researchers have begun to apply dual-process theories of reasoning (DPToR), from…

Identifying students' difficulties in understanding Gauss's and Ampere's laws is important for developing educational strategies that promote an expertlike understanding of the field concept and Maxwell's equations of electromagnetic phenomena. This study aims to analyze and compare students' understanding of symmetry when applying Gauss's and…

In this paper, we seek to evaluate the extent to which students can follow a deductive reasoning chain when it is presented to them. A great deal of instruction in introductory physics courses is centered on presenting students with a logical argument that starts from first principles and systematically leads to a particular conclusion. This…

Polarization of light is one of the topics in the Croatian high school physics curriculum. It is taught in the final year of high school education. Twenty-seven Croatian high-school students (aged 18-19 years) were interviewed after regular instruction about their understanding of polarization of light and the model of light itself. This paper…

Our aesthetic response to the Universe, and the complexity of concepts through which we understand it, are inherently bound together in how we meaningfully interpret its nature. Over millennia the abstracted and intangible concepts of science have been developed and communicated through a rich array of representations across a variety of modes.…

After targeted instruction designed to improve student conceptual understanding of physics, a significant fraction of students are not able to answer many questions in a consistent manner. Prior research suggests that even those students who demonstrate that they acquired the relevant knowledge and skills (i.e., possess the requisite…

The topic of atomic spectra is part of university and secondary school curricula around the world. Relatively little research, however, has been done on the learning and teaching of this subject, despite the fact that it forms a foundation for advanced study in quantum mechanics, astronomy, and astrophysics. A systematic investigation into student…

An essential skill for success in upper-division physics curricula is the ability to work with and apply mathematical and physical concepts through Cartesian and non-Cartesian coordinate systems. These skills are most notably necessary in electricity and magnetism, wherein students must build and solve integrals and perform vector derivatives in…

In order to investigate students' misunderstandings of potential wells and tunneling, a conceptual knowledge test was administered to Dutch secondary school students after they were taught about quantum mechanics. A frequency analysis of responses to the multiple choice questions (n = 98) and coding of the responses to the open-ended questions and…