20.500.12556/RUL-166938 How analogies helped novice students think about superposition states and collapse in quantum mechanics In myactive learning course on quantum mechanics, students build their knowledge by following the scientific process as outlined by the Investigative Science Learning Environment. In this course, open-ended questions on the effect of measurement (collapse) failed to elicit meaningful responses from students. Meaningful responses are crucial for the next steps of testing students’ ideas using hypothetico-deductive reasoning. I wanted to help the students in this process with a pictorial representation. To arrive at a pictorial representation that would have meaning for students, I first asked them to provide their analogies for a superposition state. A commonsuggestion was the mixture of colours, but other, more inventive analogies were also suggested. I developed a pictorial representation based on the colour analogy. I reformulated the questions on collapse using this representation and a more concretized formulation. The ability of students to meaningfully answer the questions increased to the point where it was possible to complete also the testing part of the process. In the article, I discuss the analogies that students suggested and what underlying ideas known from literature they could represent. I provide the derived representation, the reformulated questions and evidence of how this helped students articulate their answers and helped identify students’ productive ideas that they could not clearly articulate in words. This enabled students to arrive at conclusions about the effect of measurement following the scientific process. This study contributes to the literature by providing student-generated analogies, using a pictorial representation derived from student-generated analogies, and showing an example of an efficiently formulated question on a difficult topic that is able to elicit meaningful responses. physics education secondary school quantum mechanics representations analogies active learning poučevanje fizike srednja šola kvantna mehanika reprezentacije analogije aktivno učenje true false true Angleški jezik Slovenski jezik Članek v reviji 2025-01-31 14:07:06 2025-01-31 14:07:07 2025-02-01 04:06:27 0000-00-00 00:00:00 2025 0 0 24 str. art. no. ǂ9 Vol. 12 Jan. 2025 0000-00-00 Zaloznikova Objavljeno NiDoloceno 0000-00-00 0000-00-00 0000-00-00 37.091.3:530.145 2196-0763 10.1140/epjqt/s40507-025-00309-6 224738563 s40507-025-00309-6.pdf s40507-025-00309-6.pdf 1 B5B0E577228A062741869A920440192D 423a42862cc4e211db47abe9cf1d567a7ee9b77b3d38bea89ef641982963d4ba 9f8b1e46-dfd3-11ef-b232-0050569b8976 https://repozitorij.uni-lj.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=199005 https://epjquantumtechnology.springeropen.com/articles/10.1140/epjqt/s40507-025-00309-6 0 aa4525d0-dfd3-11ef-b232-0050569b8976 https://repozitorij.uni-lj.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=199006 Fakulteta za matematiko in fiziko 0 0 0