This paper lists 15 commonly held misconceptions concerning quantum mechanics, such as "Energy eigenstates are the only allowed states" and "The wave function is dimensionless." A few suggestions are offered to help combat these misconceptions in teaching.

The purpose of this study is to identify students' conceptual and mathematical difficulties in learning the core concepts of introductory quantum mechanics, with the eventual goal of developing instructional material to help students with these difficulties. We have investigated student understanding of several core topics in the introductory courses, including quantum measurement, probability, Uncertainty Principle, wave functions, energy eigenstates, recognizing symmetry in physical systems, and mathematical formalism.

We have investigated student difficulties in understanding and interpreting probability and its relevant technical terms as it relates to quantum measurement. These terms include expectation value, probability density, and uncertainty. From this research, it is evident that tstudents have difficulties in understanding these terms and often fail to differentiate among similar but different concepts. In addition, students' difficutlies with the concepts of probability often interfere with their understanding and applications of the Uncertainty Principle.

Materials developed by the Visual Quantum Mechanics project teach some basic ideas of quantum mechanics to high school and introductory college students by integrating hands-on activities and computer visualization. During field tests of the materials we obtained data concerning student understanding of some quantum concepts including potential energy diagrams, energy levels and spectra in atoms, energy bands in solids, wave functions and probability, and quantum tunneling. Data were collected from written responses of students structured interviews and a concept map.

In this paper, one student's learning process in a course on quantum atomic physics in grade 13 of a German gymnasium (secondary school) is described. The course lasted 16 weeks for a total of approximately 80 lessons. The aim of the present study is to elaborate the student's cognitive system for atomic physics as a hypothetical pragmatic model to describe, analyse and explain his thinking and learning sequence of several meta-stable conceptions of the atom, starting from a planetary model.

(entire thesis written in Norwegian)

(introduction text:)

In an Open University history of science course a unit was written to provide basic information on quantum theory for students with arts and social science backgrounds. This was necessary to enable these students to handle the Bohr-Einstein debate. Detailed evaluation of the unit with a sample of students showed that it achieved its purpose even though there were aspects which some students found difficult. The effectiveness of the unit was borne out in the assignment performance of the sample.

Reports on a preliminary project that uses a phenomenographic approach to explore the ways in which a small number of fundamental ideas are conceptualized by students who are judged to have mastered quantum mechanics material.

(first paragraph from Chapter 6: Discussion, 6.1: Summary of findings:)
The relevance of the results of this study can be best expressed by presenting them in a different order from the way they were reported in Chapter 5. The results can be thought of as a description of what a student goes through when introduced to a new concept in quantum mechanics. This will give a picture that exposes the extent of the difficulties students encounter.