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Session:
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Title:
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Student Understanding of Tunneling
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Meeting:
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127th AAPT National Meeting: Madison, WI |
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Location:
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Hall of Ideas E |
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Date:
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Monday, Aug. 4 |
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Time:
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3:30PM
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Author:
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Jeffrey Morgan, The Univ. of Maine
207-581-1038, jeffrey.morgan@umit.maine.edu
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Co-Author(s):
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Michael C. Wittmann
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Abstract:
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Members of the University of Maine Physics Education Research Laboratory are studying student understanding of the phenomenon of tunneling through a potential barrier. Tunneling is a standard topic discussed in most modern physics and quantum mechanics courses. Understanding tunneling is crucial to making sense of several topics in physics, including scanning tunneling microscopy and nuclear decay. Preliminary investigations show that students often inappropriately use ideas from classical physics and common sense, everyday reasoning to make sense of unfamiliar situations. Consistent with previous results,1 we have found that many students, even after instruction, incorrectly believe that particles tunneling through a barrier lose energy in the process. We discuss these and other results from a series of interviews conducted with upper-level undergraduate physics and engineering physics majors.
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Footnotes:
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1. Edward F. Redish, Michael C. Wittmann, and Richard N. Steinberg, "Affecting Student Reasoning in the Context of Quantum Tunneling," AAPT Summer Meeting, 2000.
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