Adaptable Curricular Exercises for Quantum Mechanics
developed by Steven Pollock, Gina Passante, and Homeyra SadaghianiThis page contains a broad selection of curricular materials for instructors of a middle/upper-division first quantum mechanics course. These materials are largely designed for a “Spins First” Quantum 1 curriculum (If you teach a "Wave functions first" course, you may still find useful materials but the organization will not match your course very well!)
Materials by Topic
Here you will find all our materials organized by topic. We follow a spins-first curriculum labeled with chapters of McIntyre's Quantum Mechanics textbook (but the materials can easily be adapted for any spins-first curriculum, and with a little more significant reorganization, to a "wave functions first" curriculum).
Within each content area you will find separate folders with:
Clicker questions, Sample Exam questions, Sample Homework Questions, our Lecture Notes (and lecture powerpoints), Pre-lecture warmup questions, and Tutorials/activities with instructor guides and pretests.
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Download the Read Me First: (Verification Required)
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Download the set of ALL our materials organized by topics: (Verification Required)
This is a large, COMPLETE DOWNLOAD. (>600 MB, be patient) Nothing else should be required except end of term assessments.
Topics in the above download include :
0) Background/Modern Physics
1) Stern-Gerlach experiments
2) Operators and Measurements
3) Schrodinger Time Evolution
4) Quantum entanglement (and Quantum computation, also in Ch 16)
5) Spatial wave functions and particle in a box
6) Unbound states
7) Angular momentum
8) Hydrogen atom
16) Quantum Computation
Selected Materials by Pedagogy
Here you can download smaller sub-collections of selected materials (for the entire semester).
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Download the Concept Test collection ONLY: (Verification Required)
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Download the Tutorial collection ONLY: (Verification Required)
(Includes instructor guides and pretests)
For some (beta) versions of many of the Tutorials online, please visit
https://acephysics.net/
End of term assessments
The QMCA (Quantum Mechanics Conceptual Assessment) is our research-based end of term instrument designed to get a broad sense of student learning of many of the key concepts associated with our learning goals. You can download it from our PhysPort assessment page. (Contact Steven.Pollock@colorado.edu if you want to use an online version. Depending on timing constraints, we may be able to score it for you.)
We ask that, like any research-based assessment, you avoid using this as a graded assignment. Please do not use the individual QMCA questions on exams or other assignments, and avoid posting solutions (or allowing students to take hard copies of the assessment with them.)
Course Learning Goals
CONTACT INFORMATION:
This page was built by Steven Pollock (steven.pollock@colorado.edu), Gina Passante (gpassante@Fullerton.edu), and Homeyra Sadaghiani (hrsadaghiani@cpp.edu).
Contact us with questions or feedback.
We are funded in part by NSF DUE-1626280, 1626594, and 1626483: Research as a base to develop adaptable curricula bridging instructional paradigms in Quantum Mechanics
PLEASE USE AND ADAPT whatever is helpful to you, however it will most benefit your students. Please credit our work if you share your materials beyond your own classes. Please make an effort to keep assessment materials off the open web - alter questions for your students.