UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item Explanatory Cohrence in the Context of the Second Law of Thermodynamics(2014) Geller, Benjamin David; Redish, Edward F; Physics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis examines how undergraduate life science students experience interdisciplinary connections between introductory physics, chemistry, and biology - what the connections look like, how we foster them, and the affect that stems from them. It is about the gaps students experience between their introductory biology, chemistry, and physics coursework, and how we can draw upon students' resources for bridging them. Rather than looking at connections between physics, chemistry, and biology in the abstract, we ground this thesis in the conceptual context of the second law of thermodynamics, a rich domain for interdisciplinary investigation. Near the end of the thesis, we present an interdisciplinary second law curricular thread that leverages the resources our students have for crossing disciplinary boundaries in this context. Our hope is that other instructors will be convinced to embrace a more interdisciplinary treatment of the second law. The context of our study is NEXUS/Physics, a novel introductory physics course for life science students. We unpack the resources that NEXUS/Physics students have for thinking about entropy and spontaneity. We argue that an approach to the second law that emphasizes the interplay of energy and entropy in determining spontaneity (one that involves a central role for free energy) is one that draws on students' resources from biology and chemistry in particularly effective ways. We identify three ways in which students in NEXUS/Physics have meaningfully crossed disciplinary boundaries in the context of the second law: (1) by unpacking biochemical heuristics in terms of underlying physical interactions, (2) by locating both biochemical and physical concepts within a mathematical bridging expression, and (3) by coordinating functional and mechanistic explanations for the same biological phenomenon. These classes form a basis that spans the space of interdisciplinary connections that we have observed. In moments when interdisciplinary gaps are bridged, our students sometimes exhibit positive affect. We look at the source of this affect and how it interacts with disciplinary identity and epistemology. In doing so, we hope to suggest ways of inviting life science students to participate in physics and to see physics as a central tool for making sense of the biological world.Item An Epistemic Framing Analysis of Upper Level Physics Students' Use of Mathematics(2008-07-11) Bing, Thomas Joseph; Redish, Edward F.; Physics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Mathematics is central to a professional physicist's work and, by extension, to a physics student's studies. It provides a language for abstraction, definition, computation, and connection to physical reality. This power of mathematics in physics is also the source of many of the difficulties it presents students. Simply put, many different activities could all be described as "using math in physics". Expertise entails a complicated coordination of these various activities. This work examines the many different kinds of thinking that are all facets of the use of mathematics in physics. It uses an epistemological lens, one that looks at the type of explanation a student presently sees as appropriate, to analyze the mathematical thinking of upper level physics undergraduates. Sometimes a student will turn to a detailed calculation to produce or justify an answer. Other times a physical argument is explicitly connected to the mathematics at hand. Still other times quoting a definition is seen as sufficient, and so on. Local coherencies evolve in students' thought around these various types of mathematical justifications. We use the cognitive process of framing to model students' navigation of these various facets of math use in physics. We first demonstrate several common framings observed in our students' mathematical thought and give several examples of each. Armed with this analysis tool, we then give several examples of how this framing analysis can be used to address a research question. We consider what effects, if any, a powerful symbolic calculator has on students' thinking. We also consider how to characterize growing expertise among physics students. Framing offers a lens for analysis that is a natural fit for these sample research questions. To active physics education researchers, the framing analysis presented in this dissertation can provide a useful tool for addressing other research questions. To physics teachers, we present this analysis so that it may make them more explicitly aware of the various types of reasoning, and the dynamics among them, that students employ in our physics classes. This awareness will help us better hear students' arguments and respond appropriately.