In this paper, we describe research results of the performance of students in Thailand on a series of open-ended questions concerning some fundamental concepts in quantum physics. The questions were taken from the University of Maryland Tutorial (Redish, Steinber and Wieman 2006) and asked students to concentrate on the pattern appearing on the screen after electrons and light pass through a double slit. Some common conceptual difficulties were identified and analyzed. The findings from this study are being used to develop a conceptual survey in quantum physics.

Quantum mechanics concepts are building blocks of many state of the art technologies. Understanding of the concepts for students are not easy as they are usually described in terms of complex mathematics models. Therefore, an attempt is made to improve students’ understanding of quantum mechanics. We propose an innovative tool for exploring students’ ideas on quantum mechanics called Quantum Mechanics Conceptual Evaluation (QMCE) Test. This tool is designed for first-year undergraduate students in Thai universities.

We present a study of student understanding of energy in quantum mechanical tunneling and barrier penetration. This paper will focus on student responses to two questions that were part of a test given in class to two modern physics classes and in individual interviews with 17 students. The test, which we refer to as the Quantum Mechanics Conceptual Survey (QMCS), is being developed to measure student understanding of basic concepts in quantum mechanics.

This paper describes the process of writing a quantum mechanics concept inventory concerning one-dimensional potential barriers, tunnelling and probability distribution. It also explores some of the related alternative conceptions, and presents the results of 216 inventory questionnaires distributed to four groups of students in an appendix.

In order to probe various aspects of student understanding of some of the core ideas of quantum mechanics, and especially how they develop over the undergraduate curriculum, we have developed an assessment instrument designed to test conceptual and visualization understanding in quantum theory.

The purpose of this study was to construct a valid and reliable multiple-choice achievement test to assess students’ understanding of core concepts of introductory quantum mechanics. Development of the Quantum Mechanics Visualization Instrument (QMVI) occurred across four successive semesters in 1999-2001. During this time 213 undergraduate and graduate students attending the Pennsylvania State University (PSU) at University Park and Arizona State University (ASU) participated in this development and validation study.