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Re: My Optics Education Project (MOEP)

On Thu, 30 May 1996 nafindley@vassar.edu wrote:

Hello All,
My name is Nate Findley, I am a research fellow at Vassar College
and I am working under Cindy Schwarz. One of our projects this summer is
to create a diagnostic exam that professors can use to test student's
qualitative knowledge of optics. We are trying to figure out what concepts
students have trouble with in optics so, similarly to the FCI, the test
will show the difference before and after a intro physics course. If
anyone can help us with our problem that would be great! Also, any
comments and questions are welcome.

Hi Nate!

There was some work in just this subject done by Goldberg &McDermott,
paper in AJP called something like "Student misconceptions about images
formed by converging lenses and concave mirrors." Students drew a
particular incorrect diagram when asked to explain how a lens formed an
image. After an intro optics course some of them drew an accurate diagram
and some still drew the incorrect one, indicating that their misconception
was tenacious, and was not dislodged by the course work.

There's a bit about this on my Misconceptions page,
http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/miscon/lens.html

I think there is a reference for the McDermott paper towards the end.

My "lens.html" article is an attempt to point out that some optics
misconceptions do not arise spontaneously in students, they are
specifically taught in earlier grades! The misconceptions are almost
impossible to dislodge from the textbooks, since numerous books contain
the same error and this constitutes a mistaken "concensual reality" on the
part of the authors which strongly resists change.

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