This fun paper describes the travails of trying to create a quantum mechanics concept inventory (a test focused on conceptual understanding): journals.aps.org/prper/pdf/10.1
e.g. D is "obviously" the answer to me, but it privileges a matter wave interpretation, so some profs say E…
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Incidentally, only 64% of undergrads at University of Colorado were able to answer that one correctly after finishing their modern physics course—yikes! (E, the alternative answer you might favor, only garnered 5%… most wrong answers were B or C)
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Actually… is there a coherent QM interpretation which would support B?
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If that large a percentage of the faculty disagree as to the fundamental underpinnings of how to answer this question, perhaps that's an indication that testing the students for "the right answer" for this question is asking the wrong question.
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It would be better phrased as, "assuming that you wish to espouse INTERPRETATION OF PHYSICS, the answer to this question would be…"
That would demonstrate understanding. Not just to predict what your professor thinks.
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If I were teaching sophomore level QM I would simply assign this paper as a reading and give the QMCS as the final 🙃
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If you just asked the multiple choice question, for a photon shot at two slits does the photon go through: 1: either left or right slit, 2: both slits, 3: impossible to determine, how would you answer? Would you answer #2 to that question?
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It's a trick question. The pattern can be ignored because the question makes no statement about a detector. With no detector it's impossible to determine which slit the photon went through, if it ever did in the first place ha ha. The answer is E.
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But trick or not, I would still go with E. If you have a bullet pattern, it's because the photon went through one slit or the other. If you have a wave pattern, it's because it's unknowable which slit the photon went through.
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