Stats on Students Understanding Theory of Relativity

[PainterGuy]

Hi,

I'm not sure if it's a good idea to start a thread about the following problem but I didn't want to PM anyone.

Some time ago I came across a thread which had stats related to the problems faced by students learning the theory of relativity. It showed like how many undergraduates really understand the theory of relativity even after taking a course about it. It might be possible that there were just a post or two on that topic but the topic of thread was different. I believe @Janus also contributed to that thread. I have been trying to find that thread without any success. I'd really appreciate if you could help me to locate that thread, or perhaps you can help me find some webpage(s) which addresses this issue. Thank you!

 

[Ibix]

There's a paper @pervect sometimes cites about teaching and learning relativity. I've read it but don't recall if it has statistics.

 

[pervect]

The paper in question, http://www.physics.umd.edu/perg/papers/scherr/ScherrAJP2.pdf, "The challenge of changing deeply held student beliefs about the relativityof simultaneity", by Scherr, does have some statistics. It is somewhat limited in scope and 19 years old now, but it may have some good insights as to how to teach relativity, particularly the relativity of simultaneity. It's not really focussed on providing a good estimate of general student understanding nation or world wide even at the time it was written.

 

[PainterGuy]

The paper in question, http://www.physics.umd.edu/perg/papers/scherr/ScherrAJP2.pdf, "The challenge of changing deeply held student beliefs about the relativityof simultaneity", by Scherr, does have some statistics.

Thank you for sharing the article but I think I did see something here in a thread. It wasn't the article.

PS: I was checking the bookmarked posts and it looks like I was confused and mixing up the things. It might have been this thread, https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/clock-synchronization.205558/ and I had bookmarked it as well.

 

[pervect]

Looking back at that thread, I referenced another paper by Scherr, Shaffer and Vokos, namely
"Student understanding of time in special relativity: simultaneity and reference frames" as well as their paper
"The challenge of changing deeply-held student beliefs about the relativity of simultaneity". So the primary source was essentially the same authors, I'd forgotten about the other paper, though. Publication dates for both papers were ~2002.

I see what I interpret as a lot of confusion on the simulataneioty issue in PF posts, but those are my subjective perceptions. Additionally, the audience here at PF is broader than the student audience in the referenced papers. I do tend to believe that confusion exists about simultaneity to this very day, but I haven't studied the issue in depth - these two old papers might be a good starting point for more research on the issue, though.