Teaching the concepts of measurement: An example of a concept-based laboratory course
- 21 July 2005
- journal article
- Published by American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) in American Journal of Physics
- Vol. 73 (8), 771-777
- https://doi.org/10.1119/1.1881253
Abstract
For students to successfully complete an experiment, they must have an understanding of measurement and its related uncertainty. We argue for teaching the concepts of measurement and not only the calculations. An example of a concepts-based laboratory course is given, outlining the concepts presented, the design of the laboratory time, and the laboratory tasks. The concepts are briefly described and two often-overlooked concepts, predictive versus descriptive questions and internal versus external variation, are explained. Our survey results show that the fraction of students using range and not just average when comparing two data sets approximately doubled after instruction.Keywords
This publication has 14 references indexed in Scilit:
- What sort of science education do we really need?International Journal of Science Education, 2002
- Students do not overcome conceptual difficulties after solving 1000 traditional problemsAmerican Journal of Physics, 2002
- The development of first year physics students' ideas about measurement in terms of point and set paradigmsInternational Journal of Science Education, 2001
- Student understanding of time in special relativity: Simultaneity and reference framesAmerican Journal of Physics, 2001
- Student understanding of light as an electromagnetic wave: Relating the formalism to physical phenomenaAmerican Journal of Physics, 1999
- Is this the right answer?International Journal of Science Education, 1997
- Children's ideas about the reliability of experimental dataInternational Journal of Science Education, 1996
- Learning the statistical analysis of measurement errorsInternational Journal of Science Education, 1993
- Investigation of student understanding of the concept of acceleration in one dimensionAmerican Journal of Physics, 1981
- Conceptual Physics Turning Nonscience Students on to their Everyday EnvironmentsThe Physics Teacher, 1972