ABSTRACT
Over the last fifteen years there has been considerable research interest in the student’s perceptions of phenomena in such areas as energy, motion, the particulate nature of matter, electricity, and light. However, ninety years after the genesis of Quantum Physics significant research on students’ understanding of such revolutionary phenomena is only beginning to emerge. What are electrons really like? Are they like particles or waves? Are they like both particles and waves, or like neither? These questions illustrate the psychological difficulties with which students are confronted when trying to incorporate the concepts of quantum physics into their overall conceptual framework. They also illustrate the difficulties in using analogies taken from ordinary experience (i.e., essentially classical models) to ‘explain’ the subatomic world. In its predictive abilities quantum theory is the most successful physical theory that has ever been conceptualized, and yet Einstein once remarked that quantum theory reminded him of ‘the system of delusions of an exceedingly intelligent paranoiac, concocted of incoherent elements of thought.’ (In Arthur Fine, 1986).
