Joshua Biro reports from an online workshop he held to find out how we know if a student has really understood a piece of physics

Tricky task It's often harder to know why students have come to the right answer, rather than the wrong one. (Courtesy: iStock/DrAfter123_)"> Tricky task It's often harder to know why students have come to the right answer, rather than the wrong one. (Courtesy: iStock/DrAfter123_)

How do you know when a student has really understood a piece of physics? That was the simple premise behind a recent online workshop I organized, attended by almost 100 school teachers, researchers, students and educators from around the world.

To explore the topic, I posed a question about nuclear half lives, to which I gave three possible answers.…