Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

New Methodologies For Examining And Supporting Student Reasoning In Physics, John C. Speirs

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Learning how to reason productively is an essential goal of an undergraduate education in any STEM-related discipline. Many non-physics STEM majors are required to take introductory physics as part of their undergraduate programs. While certain physics concepts and principles may be of use to these students in their future academic careers and beyond, many will not. Rather, it is often expected that the most valuable and longlasting learning outcomes from a physics course will be a repertoire of problem-solving strategies, a familiarity with mathematizing real-world situations, and the development of a strong set of qualitative inferential reasoning skills.

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Investigating Student Understanding Of Vector Calculus In Upper-Division Electricity And Magnetism: Construction And Determination Of Differential Element In Non-Cartesian Coordinate Systems, Benjamin Schermerhorn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Differential length, area, and volume elements appear ubiquitously over the course of upper-division electricity and magnetism (E&M), used to sum the effects of or determine expressions for electric or magnetic fields. Given the plethora of tasks with spherical and cylindrical symmetry, non-Cartesian coordinates are commonly used, which include scaling factors as coefficients for the differential terms to account for the curvature of space. Furthermore, the application to vector fields means differential lengths and areas are vector quantities. So far, little of the education research in E&M has explored student understanding and construction of the non-Cartesian differential elements used in applications …

Echoes Of The Past: The Effect Of Background Experience On Far Transfer, Graham H. Hummel-Hall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Far transfer is the application of knowledge learned in one setting to a problem in a very different setting. This multi-method study looked at far transfer in humans and whether it could be facilitated, inhibited, or remain unaffected by the number of courses or years a student at a university spent learning about the subject matter of the knowledge being transferred. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis of pretest and post-test data from an introductory undergraduate earth science course, I found that students with more physical science background experience more frequently engaged in successful and accurate transfer of physics information to …

Examining Student Reasoning In Introductory Physics: Reversing The Chain, William S. Johnson

Honors College

While physics education researchers have investigated student conceptual understanding of specific topics in physics for over thirty years, much less is known about the ability of students to construct qualitative inferential reasoning chains. Such reasoning chains are ubiquitous in scaffolded, research-based instructional materials. As part of a multi-institutional effort to develop instruments to probe student reasoning skills, this thesis describes an investigation into whether the direction of a question can influence the ability of the students to construct correct reasoning chains. Reasoning reversal tasks were administered to introductory calculus-based physics students at the University of Maine. Students were randomly presented …

Student Application Of The Fundamental Theorem Of Calculus With Graphical Representations In Mathematics And Physics, Rabindra R. Bajracharya

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

One mathematical concept frequently applied in physics is the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus (FTC). Mathematics education research on student understanding of the FTC indicates student difficulties with the FTC. Similarly, a few studies in physics education have implicitly indicated student difficulties with various facets of the FTC, such as with the definite integral and the area under the curve representation, in physics contexts. There has been no research on how students apply the FTC in graphically-based physics questions.

This study investigated student understanding of the FTC and its application to graphically-based problems. Our interest spans several aspects of the FTC: …

Identifying Productive Resources In Secondary School Students' Discourse About Energy, Benedikt Walter Harrer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A growing program of research in science education acknowledges the beginnings of disciplinary reasoning in students’ ideas and seeks to inform instruction that responds productively to these disciplinary progenitors in the moment to foster their development into sophisticated scientific practice. This dissertation examines secondary school students’ ideas about energy for progenitors of disciplinary knowledge and practice. Previously, researchers argued that students’ ideas about energy were constrained by stable and coherent conceptual structures that conflicted with an assumed unified scientific conception and therefore needed to be replaced. These researchers did not attend to the productive elements in students’ ideas about energy. …

Temperature Conditions At Orono, Maine, Ernest Claude Drew

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an outgrowth of a much larger piece of work which the Department of Physics, thru its instructors and major students, has undertaken to complete. The task referred to, is the compilation, arrangement, and summarizing of the various meteorological records taken at the University of Maine for the past forty-four years. These records were begun in the above department by Dr. M. C. Fernald in the year 1869 and were continued by him until 1893. The work was then transferred to the Experiment Station, where observations were made under the direction of Doctors W. H. Jordan and C. …