RUME 26
2024
Omaha, Nebraska
Student Use of Series Expansions as an Approximation Technique in Physics
Page: 1260
As part of a larger project to investigate student use of mathematics in upper-division physics courses, we have examined how students use series expansions as a means of approximating and simplifying complicated expressions in theory-oriented physics courses. Student responses were collected on pre- and post-instruction written tasks in which students were prompted to use a series to approximate an expression arising from a problem in electricity and magnetism. Despite prior experience with series in calculus and physics, students struggled to determine appropriate quantities in which to expand and did not attend to units or the convergence of their series. While student success rates improved after targeted instruction, many students expanded in quantities that were neither dimensionless nor small, and thus unproductive for modeling.