Resumen de Plumbdads and Quarkles: Discussing Modeling Trends with Students Using Fictional Parameters
Helping students develop an understanding of how to interpret experimental data trends is an important part of the introductory physics laboratory. Unfortunately, many of my colleagues have lamented that too many of their students do this poorly. This is a common refrain, and past research has already revealed student difficulties with measurement, uncertainty, and the overall meaning of data.1–3 Like many instructors, I prefer discovery-style labs and in many laboratory investigations students are asked to use curve-fitting tools to discover a relationship.4 But one day in lab, I began to wonder if students were looking at data and curve fitting in a way profoundly different than scientists. Research already indicates significant differences,5,6 but to get a clearer understanding of how students would treat general data, a hypothetical set of data using fictional parameters (plumbdads and quarkles) was given to first day students.
