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Identify student cognitive resources across single-photon and related experiments

Identify the specific cognitive resources that a broader population of students activate while working with single-photon quantum optics experiments and related experiments such as Bell’s inequality demonstrations, to build a comprehensive framework of student reasoning across quantum lab contexts.

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Background

The paper identifies four resources students used to make sense of single-photon interference: knowledge of classical wave interference, knowledge of wave functions, probabilistic interpretation of quantum outcomes, and information-based reasoning.

Recognizing that other students may engage different or additional resources, the authors explicitly call for work to identify resources activated by broader populations and in related experimental contexts such as Bell’s inequality.

References

Nonetheless, there are many open questions to which the community should attend. Future work is needed to implement a large-scale study of conceptual learning with these experiments, to identify resources other students activate while working with these experiments and related ones (e.g., the Bell's inequality experiment), and to understand the role that lab partners or groups play as students reason through the seemingly strange experimental results that quantum mechanics predicts.

— Student reasoning about quantum mechanics while working with physical experiments (2407.00274 - Borish et al., 29 Jun 2024) in Section 6 (Conclusions)