Physics Commons^™

Brownstein (Kenneth Robert) Papers, 1967-2001, Special Collections, Raymond H. Fogler Library, University Of Maine

Finding Aids

Kenneth Brownstein graduated with a Ph.D. in physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He came to the University of Maine in 1965 as a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Brownstein was a prolific author of articles and served as the chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy from 1992 to 1998. Brownstein retired in 2004 with emeritus status. Brownstein died in 2008.

The records mainly contain textual information but also contains some computer discs containing manuscripts of Brownstein's text book on quantum mechanics. Also, includes a facsimile of an obituary for Brownstein, copies of various articles by …

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.

For more …

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 …