Any Cornell student who has taken physics class may have wondered at some point: “what makes physics so difficult to understand?”While students may be asking this out of frustration, Prof. Paula Heron, physics, University of Washington and the Cornell Physics Education Research Lab are pursuing answers to these questions in order to improve their classrooms and help their students succeed. Heron, who is the co-founder of the “Foundations and Frontiers in Physics Education Research” conference series, gave a lecture Monday afternoon to a room full of physics professors, faculty staff, teaching assistants and students about the problems facing physics educators and the findings of the various physics education research groups. Although physics questions look slightly different, there still exists a difference between students’ intuition and their more reflective answers on tests. Although physics questions look slightly different, researchers found that many students still rely on intuitive approaches when answering even basic questions. In the meantime, Heron encourages any stressed out physics students to reflect on their own thinking: “Monitor the process you’re going through — why did I think that was the right answer?

Source: Daily Sun March 29, 2019 22:07 UTC