Can Students Develop Meaningful Conceptual Reasoning for Quantum Measurement?

In physics education, experiments play a crucial role in testing and validating theoretical concepts, providing empirical evidence to support or refute existing theories, and allowing students to apply theoretical knowledge to real-world scenarios by observing and measuring physical phenomena. Quantum mechanics has unique limitations in hands-on experiments due to challenges in conducting single-particle experiments (including their cost and the difficulty of setting them up properly). Our study examines the learning in a course designed to instead engage physics majors in conceptual discussions of quantum experiments, such as the Mach-Zehnder interferometer, through tutorial-based simulations in addition to more traditional formal treatments. This talk focuses on how students compare the mathematical formalism with the conceptual description of quantum experiments including their mastery of the material and their preferences for how to describe them.