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Physics > Physics Education

arXiv:1602.05440 (physics)
[Submitted on 17 Feb 2016]

Title:Surveying students' understanding of quantum mechanics in one spatial dimension

Authors:Guangtian Zhu, Chandralekha Singh
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Abstract:We explore the difficulties that advanced undergraduate and graduate students have with non-relativistic quantum mechanics of a single particle in one spatial dimension. To investigate these difficulties we developed a conceptual survey and administered it to more than 200 students at 10 institutions. The issues targeted in the survey include the set of possible wavefunctions, bound and scattering states, quantum measurement, expectation values, the role of the Hamiltonian, and the time-dependence of the wavefunction and expectation values. We find that undergraduate and graduate students have many common difficulties with these concepts and that research-based tutorials and peer-instruction tools can significantly reduce these difficulties. The findings also suggest that graduate quantum mechanics courses may not be effective at helping students to develop a better conceptual understanding of these topics, partly because such courses mainly focus on quantitative assessments.
Subjects: Physics Education (physics.ed-ph)
Cite as: arXiv:1602.05440 [physics.ed-ph]
  (or arXiv:1602.05440v1 [physics.ed-ph] for this version)
  https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1602.05440
Related DOI: https://doi.org/10.1119/1.3677653

Submission history

From: Guangtian Zhu [view email]
[v1] Wed, 17 Feb 2016 14:52:20 UTC (314 KB)
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