In the spirit and style of John S. Bell's well known paper on How to Teach Special Relativity it is argued, that a ``Bohmian pedagogy''provides a very useful tool to illustrate the relation between classical and quantum physics and illuminates the peculiar features of the latter.
A strategy is suggested for teaching mathematically literate students, with no background in physics, just enough quantum mechanics for them to understand and develop algorithms in quantum computation and quantum information theory. Although the article as a whole addresses teachers of physics, well versed in quantum mechanics, the central pedagogical development is addressed directly to computer scientists and mathematicians, with only occasional asides to their teacher. Physicists uninterested in quantum pedagogy may be amused (or irritated) by some of the views of standard quantum mechanics…
We discuss the deformation quantization approach for the teaching of quantum mechanics. This approach has certain conceptual advantages which make its consideration worthwhile. In particular, it sheds new light on the relation between classical and quantum mechanics. We demionstrate how it can be used to solve specific problems and clarify its relation to conventional quantization and path integral techniques. We also discuss its recent applications in relativistic quantum field theory.
In this small scale study we demonstrate how a gamified teaching setup can be used effectively to support student learning in a quantum mechanics course. The quantum mechanics games were research games, which were played during lectures and the learning was measured with a pretest/posttest method with promising results. The study works as a pilot study to guide the planning of quantum mechanics courses in the future at Aarhus University in Denmark.
For the example of the infinitely deep well potential, we point out some paradoxes which are solved by a careful analysis of what is a truly self-adjoint operator. We then describe the self-adjoint extensions and their spectra for the momentum and the Hamiltonian operators in different physical situations. Some consequences are worked out, which could lead to experimental checks.
QTris: a pedagogical board game to teach Quantum Mechanics
Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II”(那不勒斯费德里科二世大学);INFN Sezione di Napoli(意大利国家核物理研究所那不勒斯分部);Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - CNR-IFN(意大利国家研究委员会光子和纳米技术研究所);Università degli Studi dell’Insubria(因苏布里亚大学)
The impossibility of experiencing the molecular world with our senses hampers teaching and understanding chemistry because very abstract concepts (such as atoms, chemical bonds, molecular structure, reactivity) are required for this process. Virtual reality, especially when based on explicit physical modeling (potentially in real time), offers a solution to this dilemma. Chemistry teaching can make use of advanced technologies such as virtual-reality frameworks and haptic devices. We show how an immersive learning setting could be applied to help students understand the core concepts of typica…
Just as expert physicists vary in their personal stances on interpretation in quantum mechanics, instructors vary on whether and how to teach interpretations of quantum phenomena in introductory modern physics courses. In this paper, we document variations in instructional approaches with respect to interpretation in two similar modern physics courses recently taught at the University of Colorado, and examine associated impacts on student perspectives regarding quantum physics. We find students are more likely to prefer realist interpretations of quantum-mechanical systems when instructors are…
Quantum computation teaches us that quantum mechanics exhibits exponential complexity. We argue that the standard scientific paradigm of "predict and verify" cannot be applied to testing quantum mechanics in this limit of high complexity. We describe how QM can be tested in this regime by extending the usual scientific paradigm to include {\it interactive experiments}.
Convenient and simple numerical techniques for performing quantum computations based on matrix representations of Hilbert space operators are presented and illustrated by various examples. The applications include the calculations of spectral and dynamical properties for one-dimensional and two-dimensional single-particle systems as well as bosonic many-particle and open quantum systems. Due to their technical simplicity these methods are well suited as a tool for teaching quantum mechanics to undergraduates and graduates. Explicit implementations of the presented numerical methods in Matlab a…
What violations of Bell inequalities teach us is that the world is quantum mechanical, i.e., nonclassical. Assertions that they imply the world is nonlocal arise from ignoring differences between quantum and classical physics.
Many of the conceptual problems students have in understanding quantum mechanics arise from the way probabilities are introduced in standard (textbook) quantum theory through the use of measurements. Introducing consistent microscopic probabilities in quantum theory requires setting up appropriate sample spaces taking proper account of quantum incompatibility. When this is done the Schrodinger equation can be used to calculate probabilities independent of whether a system is or is not being measured, and the results usually ascribed to wave function collapse are obtained in a less misleading w…
The traditional pedagogical paradigm in physics is based on a deductive approach. However, with the recent advances in information technology, we are facing a dramatic increase in the amount of readily available information; hence, the ability to memorize the material and provide rigorous derivations lacks significance. Our success in navigating the current "sea" of information depends increasingly on our skills in pattern recognition and prompt qualitative analysis. Inductive learning (using examples and intuition-based) is most suitable for the development of such skills. This needed change …
We discuss the quantum mechanics of a particle restricted to the half-line $x > 0$ with potential energy $V = α/x^2$ for $-1/4 < α< 0$. It is known that two scale-invariant theories may be defined. By regularizing the near-origin behavior of the potential by a finite square well with variable width $b$ and depth $g$, it is shown how these two scale-invariant theories occupy fixed points in the resulting $(b,g)$-space of Hamiltonians. A renormalization group flow exists in this space and scaling variables are shown to exist in a neighborhood of the fixed points. Consequently, the propagator of …
The Schrodinger equation for a macroscopic number of particles is linear in the wave function, deterministic, and invariant under time reversal. In contrast, the concepts used and calculations done in statistical physics and condensed matter physics involve stochasticity, nonlinearities, irreversibility, top-down effects, and elements from classical physics. This paper analyzes several methods used in condensed matter physics and statistical physics and explains how they are in fundamental ways incompatible with the above properties of the Schrodinger equation. The problems posed by reconcilin…
I explore whether it is possible to make sense of the quantum mechanical description of physical reality by taking the proper subject of physics to be correlation and only correlation, and by separating the problem of understanding the nature of quantum mechanics from the hard problem of understanding the nature of objective probability in individual systems, and the even harder problem of understanding the nature of conscious awareness. The resulting perspective on quantum mechanics is supported by some elementary but insufficiently emphasized theorems. Whether or not it is adequate as a new …
In 1926, Erwin Schrodinger wrote a series of papers that invented wave mechanics and set the foundation for much of the single-particle quantum mechanics that we teach today. In his first paper, he solved the Schrodinger equation using the Laplace method, which is a technique that is quite powerful, but rarely taught. This is unfortunate, because it opens the door to examining quantum mechanics from a complex-analysis perspective. Gaining this experience with complex analysis is a useful notion to consider when teaching quantum mechanics, as these techniques can be widely used outside of quant…
Very little is known about how the nature of expertise in introductory and advanced courses compares in knowledge-rich domains such as physics. We develop a framework to compare the similarities and differences between learning and patterns of student difficulties in introductory physics and quantum mechanics. Based upon our framework, we argue that the qualitative patterns of student reasoning difficulties in introductory physics bear a striking resemblance to those found for upper-level quantum mechanics. The framework can guide the design of teaching and learning tools.
With an eye on developing a quantum theory of gravity, many physicists have recently searched for quantum challenges to the equivalence principle of general relativity. However, as historians and philosophers of science are well aware, the principle of equivalence is not so clear. When clarified, we think quantum tests of the equivalence principle won't yield much. The problem is that the clash/not-clash is either already evident or guaranteed not to exist. Nonetheless, this work does help teach us what it means for a theory to be geometric.
Entanglement, a phenomenon that has puzzled scientists since its discovery, has been extensively studied by many researchers through both theoretical and experimental aspect of both quantum information processing (QIP) and quantum mechanics (QM). But how can entanglement be most effectively taught to computer science students compared to applied physics students?. in this educational pursuit, we propose using Yao.jl, a quantum computing framework written in Julia for teaching entanglement to graduate computer science students attending a quantum computing class at Johns Hopkins University. Dav…
The paper argues that far from challenging - or even refuting - Bohm's quantum theory, the no-hidden-variables theorems in fact support the Bohmian ontology for quantum mechanics. The reason is that (i) all measurements come down to position measurements and (ii) Bohm's theory provides a clear and coherent explanation of the measurement outcome statistics based on an ontology of particle positions, a law for their evolution and a probability measure linked with that law. What the no-hidden-variables theorems teach us is that (i) one cannot infer the properties that the physical systems possess…
Quantum Mechanics (QM) stands alone as a (very) successful physical theory, but the meaning of its variables and the status of many quantities in the mathematical formalism is obscure. This unique situation prompted the need for attribution of a physical meaning to the latter, a procedure known as interpretation. On the other hand, the study of QM is usually presented, even to future scientists, within the only framework developed by Bohr and the Copenhagen researchers, known as the Copenhagen interpretation. As a contribution to the understanding and teaching of Quantum Mechanics, aimed to a …
Learning advanced physics, in general, is challenging not only due to the increased mathematical sophistication but also because one must continue to build on all of the prior knowledge acquired at the introductory and intermediate levels. In addition, learning quantum mechanics can be especially challenging because the paradigms of classical mechanics and quantum mechanics are very different. Here, we review research on student reasoning difficulties in learning upper-level quantum mechanics and research on students' problem-solving and metacognitive skills in these courses. Some of these stu…
The laws of quantum mechanics are couched in subtle mathematical language. The laws are not usually stated in a compact pedagogical form. Here I present a possible way to correct this. Essential facts can be distilled into seven statements that are easy to remember and easily referred back. Also, the current teaching of quantum mechanics is laden with words of negative connotations, originating as they did during the early decades of the subject when the subject was intellectually still puzzling. A wide variety of experiments in the intervening decades, not least those that were awarded the No…
The dynamics of any classical-mechanics system can be formulated in the reparametrization-invariant (RI) form (that is we use the parametric representation for trajectories, ${\bf x}={\bf x}(τ)$, $t=t(τ)$ instead of ${\bf x}={\bf x}(t)$). In this pedagogical note we discuss what the quantization rules look like for the RI formulation of mechanics. We point out that in this case some of the rules acquire an intuitively clearer form. Hence the formulation could be an alternative starting point for teaching the basic principles of quantum mechanics. The advantages can be resumed as follows. a) In…