Making Sense of How Students Make Sense of Mechanical Waves

Abstract

We report on our study of student understanding of the physics of mechanical waves, specifically the propagation and superposition of simple wavepulses traveling on long, taut strings. We introduce the terms "particle pulses mental model" to describe the reasoning approach that students use to guide their thinking in wave propagation and superposition. Student responses on free response and multiple-choice, multiple response questions dealing with the same physics show inconsistent student thinking, where they may have both correct and incorrect ideas about the concepts.

8 pages, 6 figures, 3 tables, 10 references and notes

Cited by in corpus (11)

• The Object Coordination Class Applied to Wavepulses: Analysing Student Reasoning in Wave Physics
• Investigating Student Understanding of Quantum Mechanics: Spontaneous Models of Conductivity
• Understanding and Affecting Student Reasoning About Sound Waves
• Using resource graphs to represent conceptual change
• Using conceptual blending to describe emergent meaning in wave propagation
• Impact of Guided Inquiry with Simulations on Knowledge of Electricity and Wave Phenomena
• Helping students become proficient problem solvers Part II: An example from waves
• Speed of transverse waves in a string revisited
• Planning Curricular Proposals on Sound and Music with Prospective Secondary-School Teachers
• Research in the Resources Framework: Changing environments, consistent exploration
• U-Shaped development of Newtonian concepts: Implications for pedagogical design and research practice