Investigating and improving student understanding of quantum mechanics in the context of single photon interference

Self Cite

Research suggests that introductory physics students often have difficulty using a concept in contexts different from the ones in which they learned it without explicit guidance to help them make the connection between the different contexts. We have been investigating advanced students' learning of quantum mechanics concepts and have developed interactive tutorials which strive to help students learn these concepts. Two such tutorials, focused on the Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) and the double-slit experiment (DSE), help students learn how to use the concept of "which-path" information to reason about the presence or absence of interference in these two experiments in different situations. After working on a pretest that asked students to predict interference in the MZI with single photons and polarizers of various orientations placed in one or both paths of the MZI, students worked on the MZI tutorial which, among other things, guided them to reason in terms of which-path information in order to predict interference in similar situations. We investigated the extent to which students were able to use reasoning related to whichpath information learned in the MZI tutorial to answer analogous questions on the DSE (before working on the DSE tutorial). After students worked on the DSE pretest they worked on a DSE tutorial in which they learned to use the concept of which-path information to answer questions about interference in the DSE with single particles with mass sent through the two slits and a monochromatic lamp placed between the slits and the screen. We investigated if this additional exposure to the concept of which-path information promoted improved learning and performance on the DSE questions with single photons and polarizers placed after one or both slits. We find evidence that both tutorials promoted which-path information reasoning and helped students use this reasoning appropriately in contexts different from the ones in which they had learned it.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…We have described student performance and use of appropriate reasoning on the MZI post-test elsewhere [37], and thus, this is not discussed here. )…”

Section: Research Questions and Study Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effectiveness of interactive tutorials in promoting “which-path” information reasoning in advanced quantum mechanics

Maries

Sayer

Singh

2017

Self Cite

“…Furthermore, we found that students who were enrolled in QM courses that used active learning methods, such as peer instruction and tutorials, performed better on the QMFPS than those who did not. These approaches included active learning techniques such as peer instruction [52,53], tutorials [54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68], cooperative group problem solving [69], and Just-In-Time-Teaching [70,71], to help students develop a coherent knowledge structure of the formalism and postulates of QM. In addition, we found that, although graduate students performed significantly better than undergraduate students, their average overall score was not very high.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Validation and administration of a conceptual survey on the formalism and postulates of quantum mechanics

Marshman

Singh

2019

Self Cite

We developed and validated a conceptual survey that focuses on the formalism and postulates of quantum mechanics covered in upper-level undergraduate quantum mechanics courses. The concepts included in the Quantum Mechanics Formalism and Postulate Survey (QMFPS) focus on Dirac notation, the Hilbert space, state vectors, physical observables and their corresponding Hermitian operators, compatible and incompatible observables, quantum measurement, time-dependence of quantum states and expectation values, and spin angular momenta. Here we describe the validation and administration of the survey, which has been administered to over 400 upper-level undergraduate and graduate students from six institutions. The QMFPS is valid and reliable for use as a low-stakes test to measure the effectiveness of instruction in an undergraduate quantum mechanics course that covers relevant content. The survey can also be used by instructors to identify students' understanding of the formalism and postulates of quantum mechanics at the beginning and end of a graduate quantum mechanics course since graduate students are expected to have taken an undergraduate quantum mechanics course that covers the content included in the survey. We found that undergraduate students who engaged with research-validated learning tools performed better than students who did not on the QMFPS after the first semester of a junior/senior level quantum mechanics course. In addition, the performance of graduate students on QMFPS after instruction in the first semester of a core graduate-level quantum mechanics course was significantly better than the performance of undergraduate students at the end of the first semester of an undergraduate quantum mechanics course. However, both undergraduate and graduate students struggled with many questions on the QMFPS. A comparison with the base line data on the validated QMFPS presented here can aid instructors in assessing the effectiveness of their instructional approaches and help them identify the difficulties their students have with quantum formalism and postulates in order to help students develop a solid grasp of the formalism and postulates of quantum mechanics. I.

“…McKagan et al [59] have pointed at the problem of developing good concept test questions on duality, because of different QP interpretations. Although wave-particle duality can be found in virtually every QP curriculum, and it is seen as a central concept in teaching QP [40,53,59,69,70,74], students and teachers might not be aware of different possible interpretations. Most curriculum documents do not give detailed information on how wave-particle duality should be understood.…”

Section: -13mentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of secondary school quantum physics curricula of 15 different countries: Different perspectives on a challenging topic

Stadermann

Berg

Goedhart

2019

Secondary school level quantum physics (QP) courses have recently been implemented in the national curricula of many countries. QP gives opportunities to acquaint students with more recent physics and its applications and to discuss aspects of the nature of science. Research has shown that QP is a challenging area for students. Because the inclusion of QP in national curricula is rather new in most countries, it is interesting to compare QP curricula from these countries to make the choices by curriculum designers visible. In this study, we provide a detailed overview of QP courses from fifteen countries. We collected and analyzed official curriculum documents to identify key items present in most curricula. Our inventory identifies a shared current core curriculum of QP which contains the following seven main categories: discrete atomic energy levels, interactions between light and matter, wave-particle duality, de Broglie wavelength, technical applications, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and the probabilistic nature of QP. We also found differences in the focus of the listed topics of certain countries, which indicate different views on teaching QP and might inspire curriculum designers struggling with QP. For instance, challenging items like QP interpretations or epistemological aspects of QP are taught only in a few countries. Although research suggests that epistemological aspects help students to comprehend novel QP concepts, many countries do not explicitly include these in the curriculum. We provide reasons and suggestions for this.