مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - AN INVESTIGATION ON COLLEGE STUDENTS’ CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING OF QUANTUM PHYSICS TOPICS

Abstract :

Today, it is accustomed to investigate students who have difficulties about understanding quantum concepts and several findings indicated that they do face quite challenges about learning this difficult subject. In this study, we aim to explore students’ conceptual understanding and knowledge of the topics of quantum physics. In order to achieve this goal we designed a questionnaire based on previous investigations and conceptual questions in different studies. Senior and junior college students enrolled at school of education and science department agreed to participate in the study. It was administered to 394 students at Erciyes University. Of them, 83 and 55 were senior and junior preservice science teachers, 102 and 72 were senior and junior physics students, respectively. Rest of the participants was consisted of senior class chemistry students. At the end of this paper, we analyzed the results of questionnaire and observed that having more experience with the quantum concepts makes students to remember them easier. Results revealed that students struggle in understanding quantum physics and that was not a surprise because recent studies showed that these concepts were harder to learn than other physics concepts. In addition, the questionnaire designed for this study passed the reliability with KR-20 value of 7.83 and validity tests.