Murphy, McBride, Gross and Zollman: PERC 2009

Probing Students's Understanding of Resonance

Sytil Murphy, Dyan McBride, Josh Gross and Dean Zollman

Resonant phenomena play a crucial role in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a widely used medical tool in today's society. The basic features of the resonance in MRI can be taught by looking at the resonance of a compass driven by an electromagnetic field. However, resonance in a oscillating magnetic field is not a phenomenon that is familiar to most students. Thus, as a precursor to creating instructional materials, we investigated how students applied their learning about resonance as traditionally taught to this novel system.