Analysis of college student's conceptual perceptions of quantum concepts

Beyhan Akarsu, Bayram Akarsu

Wouter van Joolingen, Kim Krijtenburg-Lewerissa

Fungamwango Hashel Mwansa, Phillippe Kabwita

This study aimed at investigating the problems students face in understanding the concepts of angular momentum in classical and quantum mechanics, finding an effective way of improving understanding and learning the concepts of angular momentum in quantum mechanics, lastly document the challenges investigated and suggest some solutions to help students understand angular momentum in both classical and quantum mechanics. This study summarizes a series of investigations into how undergraduate Physics students perceive angular momentum in quantum mechanics at the University of Zambia. We investigated undergraduate physics student's perception of angular momentum in quantum mechanics by administering written questions (open-ended) to two different groups of classes. Out of these investigations we developed a Quantum Interactive Learning Tutorials (Qu I L Ts) and peer instruction tools to assist the students build up a considerable knowledge structure of quantum mechanics in general and angular momentum in specific, through a guided approach technique [1]. Eleven questions were administered to a group of N = 15 students, statistics for answered questions are as follows; question one 4 out of 15 representing a percentage of 26.67%, question two only 6 out of 15 student representing 40%, question three 11 out of 15 representing a percentage of 73.33%, for question four only 1 out of 15 representing a percentage of 6.67%, question five none of the students answered, question six only 1 out of 15 students representing a percentage of 6.67% managed to answer, question seven 1 out of 15 representing a percentage of 6.67% managed to answer, question eight 11 out of 15 representing a percentage of 73.33 % got the correct answer, question nine 6 out of 15 representing a percentage 40% got the right answer, question ten only three students making a percentage of 20% answered correctly, question eleven no student managed to get it right. Preliminary results show that the undergraduate physics students perception of quantum mechanics is improved after using the research-based learning tools in the lower class level quantum mechanics courses [1]. We also build up a common conceptual survey that can help lecturers better investigate undergraduate physics students understand the concept of angular momentum in particular and quantum mechanics courses in general.

Sungmin IM, Jae-Gyung KIM

Arod N. Dencer

This qualitative study investigates students’ knowledge of wave function and operator concepts.The data of the study were collected by semi-structured interviews with 34 pre-service physics teachers and analyzed by using the content analysis method. As a result of qualitative analysis, different categories were determined towards the students’ comprehension of wave function and operator concepts. These results showed that (1) students did not have enough knowledge to define the concepts of wave function and operator properly, (2) they were influenced by the perspective of classical physics in making explanations related to the concepts of quantum mechanics, and (3) a great number of students who participated in the study made explanations by using examples frequently used in quantum mechanics. It is hoped that the results of this study will help the educators to recognize the students’ comprehensions in both modern physics and quantum mechanics courses.

Mengesha Ayene Ejigu

Not only is Quantum Mechanics (QM) conceptually rich, it is also a theory that physics students have found abstract and technically formidable. Nevertheless, compared to other classical topics of physics, university students’ understanding of QM has received minimal attention in the physics education literature. The principal purpose of this study was to characterize the variation in the ways that undergraduate physics students depict the basic concepts of QM and to extrapolate the results to scaffold possible changes to instructional practices at the university that provided the context for the study. In so doing, an adaptation of a developmental phenomenographic perspective was chosen. Empirically, the study was approached through in-depth interviews with 35 physics students from two Ethiopian governmental universities after they had been exposed to the traditional QM course for one-third of a semester. Interview responses were analyzed using phenomenographic approach where a picture of students’ depictions was established for each quantum concept by expounding the given responses. For each basic quantum concept addressed, the structure of the description categories was separately constructed, and overall, it was found that naive, quasi-classical ontology and/or variants of classical ways of visualization are dominant in students’ responses. For example, it was found that students’ depictions of the photon concept could be described with three distinct categories of description, which are (a) classical intuitive description, (b) mixed model description and (c) quasi-quantum model description. Similarly, the findings revealed that it is possible to establish three qualitatively different categories of description to picture students’ depictions of matter waves, namely, (a) classical and trajectory-based description, (b) an intricate blend of classical and quantum description and (c) incipient quantum model description. Likewise, it was found that students’ depictions of uncertainty principle can be described as: (a) uncertainty as classical ignorance, (b) uncertainty as measurement disturbance and (c) uncertainty as a quasi-quantum principle. \nWith regard to learning QM, the categories of description made clear several issues: most students did not have enough knowledge to depict the basic concepts of QM properly; they were influenced by the perspective of classical physics and their perceptions in making explanations about QM; and they also applied mixed ideas, one based on their classical model and the other from newly introduced QM. These results are also supported by the findings of previous studies in similar domains. Findings from the study were used to guide the design of multiple representations-based instructions and interactive learning tutorials on the conceptual aspects of QM that has been shown to address specific difficulties identified in the study. Theoretical and practical implications of the study, as well as potential future considerations are drawn.