Physics by Inquiry Summary and Conclusions
The concept of errors turned out to be the most difficult concept (not the physics):
- Students will state: “ Data and theory do not agree because of errors “, “ The errors in my measurements are the differences between data and theory”, etc.
- Focus is often on a single measurement where data and theory agree, while ignoring all other measurements were significant differences are observed.
The level of technical sophistication of a large fraction of the students enrolled was impressive:
- Using the technology was not the hard part.
- Drawing correct conclusions from the measured data was often the stumbling block.