PROCEEDINGS OF THE 22ND ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2019
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Student reasoning about eigenvectors and eigenvalues form a resources perspective
Page: 654
Eigentheory is an important concept for modeling quantum mechanical systems. The focus of the research presented is physics students’ reasoning about eigenvectors and eigenvalues as they transition from linear algebra into quantum mechanics. Interviews were conducted at the beginning of the semester with 17 students at two different universities’ during the first week of a quantum mechanics course. Interview responses were analyzed using a Resources (Hammer, 2000) framework, which allowed us to characterize nuances in how students understand various aspects of an eigentheory problem. We share three subthemes of results to illustrate this: interpreting the equations graphically, interpreting the equals sign, and determining solutions.