In an effort to examine students’ understanding about the structure of boundary conditions in upper-division courses, think-aloud interviews were conducted in the context of both quantum mechanics and electricity and magnetism. In the quantum mechanics task, students were presented with a standard potential step scenario. In the electricity and magnetism task, students were given a classical question about electromagnetic waves at the boundary of two media. The analysis of the interviews was guided by the use of a symbolic forms perspective. In this paper, we report the symbolic forms identified in students’ work and provide examples of students’ reasoning. Generally speaking, students were able to generate the correct symbolic templates while having difficulties with the underlying conceptual ideas. We also discuss instructional implications from this study.

• Received 2 January 2020
• Accepted 3 March 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.16.010122

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society