Differences in solving physics problems by the beginners and experts

Abstract

The article presents results of the research concerning the analysis of differences in solving physics problems among the beginners and experts. The group of beginners consisted of the secondary school students, the students of information technology and mathematics, whereas the group of experts composed of the university research workers as well as post-graduate students of physics. Using the eye-tracker SMI 1250 we checked if time devoted to the analysis of task content influences considerably on full separation of essential information necessary for problem solving. The analysis of the results obtained during the research showed that the experts concentrate more easily on the most important information leading to give the correct answer to the given question. The conducted experiment revealed that in the examined group the wrong usage of knowledge gained at school during physics has big influence on the choice of the wrong answer.