Effects of representation on students solving physics problems: A fine-grained characterization

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25. Note that we use the term “strategy” broadly, and use it to include the problem features that a student chooses to focus on in addition to the overall solution plan.
26. Strategy categorization is necessarily somewhat subjective, but in nearly all cases, the categories used were unambiguous (either students use quantitative calculations or they do not; either they mention wavelength or they do not). Thus, we had only one researcher code and verify these data.
27. Our analysis focuses primarly on student performance on study tasks, and not on their in-class performance. Nevertheless, this information may be of interest.
28. Interestingly, no student made reference to both force and energy when solving any one problem. This is consistent with the findings of Sabella and Redish (Ref. [29]) who demonstrate that even advanced students can struggle when moving from force to energy pictures and vice versa.
29. M. S. Sabella and E. F. Redish (unpublished).
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