Quantum mechanics for everyone: Hands-on activities integrated with technology

Zollman, Dean; Rebello, N. Sanjay; Hogg, Kirsten

doi:10.1119/1.1435347

Cited by 145 publications

(111 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…They found that almost all students accurately conceptualized the quantum phenomena. Zollman and his colleagues 2 argued that quantum mechanics learning is not as difficult as it is commonly perceived. They suggested that non-science high school and first year college students have the capacity to comprehend quantum mechanics without classical mechanics backgrounds.…”

Section: Background and Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Engineering and Physics Students’ Perceptions About Learning Quantum Mechanics via Computer Simulations

Gong¹,

Yüksel²,

Magana³

et al.

2015 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Proceedings

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Tugba Yuksel is a Ph.D. candidate in curriculum and Instruction department at Purdue University. She has received her B.S and M.S degrees in physics education program from Hacettepe University in Turkey. She registered to a master program in department of physics at Ankara University in Turkey. At the end of the second semester, she leave her program and came to Purdue university. She holds another M.S degree in science education from Purdue University. Her research interest is mainly on examining how undergraduate level students use their model-based reasoning in the process of learning quantum mechanics and identifying new instructional strategies which helps to support visualization and modelbased reasoning. Engineering and Physics Students' Perceptions about Learning Quantum Mechanics via Computer Simulations AbstractQuantum mechanics (QM) is an important topic in engineering and physics, necessary for both the mathematical and physical prediction and explanation of a particle's behavior at atomic and subatomic levels. Computer simulations provide an advantage for helping students make sense of abstract concepts and visualize complex phenomena in the process of developing a conceptual understanding of quantum knowledge. Students' experiences and attitudes about learning via computer simulations can inform educational design and improve content delivery. In this paper, we studied students' perspective about how simulations influenced their QM learning. Results of this study showed that most students agreed that simulations are helpful for their QM learning. The positive feedback from freshman and sophomore students focused mainly on basic interactive functions of simulations. Such functionality included: ease of operation, direct visualization, and animated demonstration. Senior level students were more critical of simulations in their descriptions, pointing out the limitations of the models behind the physical explanations and the authenticity of the computational representations. Based on these research findings, we provided recommendations to improve simulation-based instructional design. Background and Motivation

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Section: Background and Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Engineering and Physics Students’ Perceptions About Learning Quantum Mechanics via Computer Simulations

Gong¹,

Yüksel²,

Magana³

et al.

2015 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Proceedings

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Therefore, the focus is often on conceptual understanding (see, for example, Refs. [5][6][7]). There have been several researchbased reforms that attempt to improve this type of instruction [5,6,[8][9][10][11][12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[5][6][7]). There have been several researchbased reforms that attempt to improve this type of instruction [5,6,[8][9][10][11][12]. Although students have the prerequisite knowledge for learning superposition at this level, there has been disagreement among faculty regarding its importance in a modern physics course [13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Student ability to distinguish between superposition states and mixed states in quantum mechanics

Passante

Emigh

Shaffer

2015

Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res.

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Superposition gives rise to the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics and is therefore one of the concepts at the heart of quantum mechanics. Although we have found that many students can successfully use the idea of superposition to calculate the probabilities of different measurement outcomes, they are often unable to identify the experimental implications of a superposition state. In particular, they fail to recognize how a superposition state and a mixed state (sometimes called a "lack of knowledge" state) can produce different experimental results. We present data that suggest that superposition in quantum mechanics is a difficult concept for students enrolled in sophomore-, junior-, and graduate-level quantum mechanics courses. We illustrate how an interactive lecture tutorial can improve student understanding of quantum mechanical superposition. A longitudinal study suggests that the impact persists after an additional quarter of quantum mechanics instruction that does not specifically address these ideas.

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“…Indeed, several prior studies have found that many advanced students struggle with the foundational issues in quantum mechanics including measurement (e.g., see [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]). Studies have focused on diverse pedagogical approaches for helping students learn quantum mechanics better (e.g., see [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]), and visualization tools such as QuVIS and QuTIP have been developed to help students develop intuition about quantum mechanical phenomena [23,24].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating and improving student understanding of the probability distributions for measuring physical observables in quantum mechanics

Marshman

Singh

2017

Eur. J. Phys.

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A solid grasp of the probability distributions for measuring physical observables is central to connecting the quantum formalism to measurements. However, students often struggle with the probability distributions of measurement outcomes for an observable and have difficulty expressing this concept in different representations. Here we first describe the difficulties that upper-level undergraduate and PhD students have with the probability distributions for measuring physical observables in quantum mechanics. We then discuss how student difficulties found in written surveys and individual interviews were used as a guide in the development of a quantum interactive learning tutorial (QuILT) to help students develop a good grasp of the probability distributions of measurement outcomes for physical observables. The QuILT strives to help students become proficient in expressing the probability distributions for the measurement of physical observables in Dirac notation and in the position representation and be able to convert from Dirac notation to position representation and vice versa. We describe the development and evaluation of the QuILT and findings about the effectiveness of the QuILT from in-class evaluations.

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Quantum mechanics for everyone: Hands-on activities integrated with technology

Cited by 145 publications

References 14 publications

Engineering and Physics Students’ Perceptions About Learning Quantum Mechanics via Computer Simulations

Engineering and Physics Students’ Perceptions About Learning Quantum Mechanics via Computer Simulations

Student ability to distinguish between superposition states and mixed states in quantum mechanics

Investigating and improving student understanding of the probability distributions for measuring physical observables in quantum mechanics

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