Chandralekha Singh
University of Pittsburgh

Student understanding of quantum mechanics

We investigate the difficulties that advanced undergraduate and beginning 
graduate students have with the material covered in the upper-level 
undergraduate quantum mechanics. Our analysis is based upon tests 
administered to students from several universities and individual 
interviews with some students. We find a number of common difficulties and 
analyze the student responses in order to extract their origin. It is 
striking that most students shared the same difficulties, given both the 
variance in their background and the variety of teaching styles and 
textbooks. Analysis suggests that the widespread misconceptions originate 
from the tendency to over-generalize concepts learned in one context to 
another inappropriate context. We are currently designing and evaluating 
interacting tutorials to help improve student understanding of quantum 
mechanics. 
*Supported in part by NSF DUE #0088906