Assessment of knowledge integration in student learning of simple electric circuits

Students’ Understanding of Microscopic Models of Electrical and Thermal Conductivity: Findings within the Development of a Multiple-Choice Concept Inventory

“…It reflects the erroneous idea that heating a metal decreases its resistance, i.e., its conductivity increases, because free electrons move faster. This idea is consistent with some previously discovered wrong ideas [3,6,16,19], where the respondents believed that heating a metal increases the kinetic energy of the free electrons and thus their velocity, resulting in a higher electrical conductivity of the metal. It seems that students from the abovementioned studies ignored the thermal excitation of the ions of the crystal lattice, which in reality has a dominant influence on the electrical conductivity of the conductor.…”

“…Regarding the structure of extrinsic semiconductors, students mistakenly think that impurities are ions [5,6], and they incorrectly associate a decrease in the interparticle potential energy with an increase in the distance between the particles of a solid [61,62]. Many students erroneously think that applying an electric field across metals results in linear motion of the free electrons [6,15], and they associate the temperature dependence of the electric conductivity of metals and semiconductors with the velocity of motion of the charge carriers [6,16,19]. When heat is transferred between bodies at different temperatures, students have the incorrect idea that the internal energy is transferred at the contact surface [61,66].…”

“…The questions in the third conceptual group test students' understanding of the motion of solid particles at a certain temperature. The group includes questions on the following: the thermal motion of molecules of a solid (15); collisions of free electrons in a conductor at room temperature (16) and at low temperatures (17); the motion of charge carriers without the influence of an external electric field in a conductor (18) and in a semiconductor (19); the motion of holes in a semiconductor (20) and the mobility of electrons relative to holes in semiconductors (21).…”

“…Our second conceptual category includes seven tasks (12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18) that test students' understanding of the motion of particles in a solid at a certain temperature. They are related to understanding the potential energy of the constituent particles of a solid (12); collisions of free electrons in a conductor at room temperature (13) and at low temperatures (14); the motion of charge carriers without the influence of an external electric field in the conductor (15) and in the semiconductor (16); the motion of holes in the semiconductor (17) and the mobility of free electrons in the semiconductor relative to holes (18). The percentage distribution of the individual answers (A-D) to the multiple-choice questions in each of the four groups of respondents (ALL, CSC, PHR, ELC) is shown in Figure 3.…”

“…Sci. 2024, 14, 275 2 of 26 electrical resistance/conductivity as a function of temperature [3,5,6,16] and thermal conductivity [3,4,17,18,20].…”