Students misconceptions about light in Algeria

Abstract

Physics education research has shown that students have difficulties in learning essential optics concepts. Therefore, in this present work we deal with student's conceptions in geometrical optics field. Our objective is to show the Algerian students misconceptions. We proposed to 246 students in first year university (aged 18-21) a closed questionnaire where most of its questions were already used by other researchers. The misunderstandings identified were compared with those in literature. The results show that our students have the same misconceptions, related to the propagation of the light, the vision, the refraction and the reflexion, as the students in other countries (Andersson, Çiǧdem ŞAHİN, Galili, Goldberg, Viennot,...). We investigate new students "misconception" concerning the propagation of the light in the vacuum. © ETOP 2009.