Hefei, March 3 (Zhongxin Net) -- Physics education and research is an emerging field of physics, especially in quantum physics, which is still in the ascendant stage.
The reporter learned from the University of Science and Technology of China that the team composed of Associate Professor Tu Tao, Professor Li Chuanfeng, Professor Xu Jinshi and Academician Guo Guangcan of the School of Physics of the university paid attention to and entered this emerging frontier field in a timely manner.
An important research direction in the field of physics education is analysis from the perspective of complexity science. If a complex circuit network has many nodes, there are either or no connections between the different nodes. Only when these nodes can be connected in series with a single connection does the so-called seepage threshold be reached and the entire circuit network is turned on.
Similarly, a student's mental neural network contains different nodes that represent different pieces of knowledge in a particular field of physics. Only when all knowledge nodes are connected to each other in an appropriate way through a correct relationship will the student's thinking flow reach a threshold of infiltration, and then the student can correctly grasp the relevant physics knowledge and correctly deal with the relevant physical problems.
The research team of USTC comprehensively used the above research models and methods, through the statistical analysis of the sample data of 6 undergraduates in the School of Physics over a six-year time cycle, to study the students' thinking process of the Dirac function in quantum physics, and found an interesting thinking flow picture: students will activate relevant concepts, build equations, perform analytical calculations, check various steps and other ways of thinking, and have difficulty reasoning at three key nodes.
The results were recently published in Physical Review-Physics Education Research, a leading journal in the field of physics education research. All three reviewers spoke highly of the paper.
In order to shorten the gap between China and international advanced countries in the field of physics education and research, the Chinese Physical Society has been committed to promoting the development of China in this research field.
The team of USTC has taken the lead in making a series of breakthroughs in China, and has published a number of achievements in international authoritative journals in this field on the educational research of quantum physics, Schrödinger equation, eigenstate problem and Dirac function. (End)