Investigating Student Difficulties with Dirac Notation
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Quantum mechanics is challenging even for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Dirac notation is a convenient notation used extensively in quantum mechanics. We have been investigating the difficulties that the advanced undergraduate and graduate students have with Dirac notation. We administered written free response and multiple-choice questions to students and also conducted semi-structured individual interviews with 23 students using a think-aloud protocol to obtain a better understanding of the rationale behind their responses. We find that many students struggle with Dirac notation and they are not consistent in using this notation across various questions in a given test. In particular, whether they answer questions involving Dirac notation correctly or not is context dependent.
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Cited by 1 Pith paper
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On the representation-free formalism in quantum mechanics
A new representation-free scheme in quantum mechanics is constructed that is free from the drawbacks of the bra-ket formalism, allows one-space and dual-space interpretations, and is suited for practical calculations.
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