The Field Guide
The Mistake Museum
The book behind these diagnostics — 89 of the predictable ways students misunderstand physics, with the exact wording to drop and the one to use instead.
Oscillations and waves are where a confident vocabulary does the most damage. A student can recite v = fλ, read values off a wave graph, and pass a procedural test while still believing a wider swing takes longer, the rope travels with the pulse, or a standing wave drifts slowly along the string. Two self-contained diagnostics that map the exact misconceptions your students carry across simple harmonic motion and the wave model. Heatmap delivered within 48 hours of class completion.
The misconceptions that matter here are conceptual, not computational: a period read as depending on the amplitude, a wave imagined to carry its medium along, a standing wave seen as a slow travelling one, a printed figure trusted past the point of physical sense. None reliably produces a wrong number on routine problems — and all produce wrong physics the moment a question probes the concept behind the formula. These patterns appear across IB, AP, A-Level, and GCSE classrooms.
A pendulum is pulled to a larger angle and released. Many students expect a longer period — a bigger swing should take more time. But for small swings the period depends only on the length and g; the amplitude does not enter it at all, and pulling further changes the period only by leaving the small-angle regime, never through the size of the swing as such. Reading the period as a property of the motion’s size, rather than of the system, is the foundational oscillations misconception.
A pulse runs down a long rope. Asked what travels, many students send the rope along with it — the material itself moving from one end to the other. But a wave moves the disturbance and its energy through the medium while each part of the medium oscillates in place and returns. The same misreading makes propagation look instantaneous, when the speed is large but finite, and lets a printed pressure curve dip below zero, when an absolute pressure cannot. What travels is the pattern, not the stuff.
A string driven at resonance shows a standing-wave pattern. Many students read it as a travelling wave moving slowly enough to watch — or picture the nodes themselves drifting along. But a standing wave is the superposition of two equal-and-opposite travelling waves: its nodes and antinodes hold fixed positions, and the pattern does not propagate at all. The nodes stay fixed at zero while the points between them oscillate — and that, not the motion of any single point, is what distinguishes a standing wave from a travelling one.
Two textbook figures: a sound wave whose pressure curve dips below zero, and a pulse reflecting off a clamped end while staying upright. Each is physically impossible — an absolute pressure cannot go negative, and a fixed-end reflection must invert — yet many students accept both, because the figure is printed and looks authoritative. The diagnostic tracks this representational-trust failure as a cross-cutting lens that fires only when both impossible figures are accepted in the same sitting, surfaced where it does the most damage.
Oscillations and Waves cover the conceptual surface of the upper-secondary oscillations-and-waves curriculum. Each runs in a single sitting and produces its own self-contained heatmap, cohort summary, and remediation toolkit. Simple harmonic motion underpins the wave content, so running Oscillations first is the natural default — but each diagnostic stands on its own. Pick the one that fits where your students are right now, or run both for the complete picture.
The foundational oscillations layer. Surfaces what sets the period, the role of the velocity’s sign in phase, the quarter-cycle kinematics, the small-angle boundary, and steady-state driven oscillation.
Covers the period as a property of the system not the amplitude, pendulum-mass independence and the vertical-spring equilibrium shift, phase and the sign of the velocity, the quarter-cycle relationship between velocity and acceleration, the small-angle boundary beyond which a pendulum is anharmonic, and driven oscillation and resonance. Six misconception bands OSC-1A through RES.
The wave layer. Surfaces what actually travels in a wave, wave speed as a property of the medium, superposition, standing waves that do not move, reflection, energy, and the Doppler shift — plus a cross-cutting representational-trust lens.
Covers wave nature and finite speed, transverse vs longitudinal, snapshot vs history, wave speed set by the medium, sound and superposition, standing waves and quantised modes, fixed- and free-end reflection, the open-end boundary, energy as amplitude squared, and the Doppler shift. Thirteen misconception bands plus the L-CRIT representational-trust lens.
Within 48 hours of your class completing a diagnostic, we send you a complete misconception analysis — actionable, teacher-readable, and ready to use in your next lesson. Each diagnostic you run produces its own self-contained set.
Colour-coded class heatmap showing performance by question and by student performance band (A–D). Items grouped by misconception band so cluster patterns become visible at a glance. Each diagnostic is scored against its own total.
Teacher-readable summary: which misconception bands hit hardest, what they mean, the L-CRIT representational-trust readout on the Waves Diagnostic, and how your class distributes across performance bands.
Mistake Museum, Words That Hurt language guide, per-diagnostic Remediation Worksheets — an Oscillations worksheet across the six oscillation bands and a Waves worksheet across the thirteen wave bands plus the lens — and a Teacher Key, keyed to the bands your class actually flagged.
What each performance band (A–D) means for your students, with specific teacher action items — from “structurally sound” to “needs foundational rebuilding.”
| Q# | Concept Tested | Overall | A (21–25) | B (16–20) | C (11–15) | D (0–10) | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q01 | Only quantised wavelengths fit a fixed string | 56% | 88% | 67% | 40% | 25% | STW-3 |
| Q02 | Pitch is frequency, not loudness | 76% | 100% | 90% | 60% | 42% | SND |
| Q03 | Snapshot vs history (wavelength vs period) | 52% | 83% | 62% | 35% | 25% | WN-3 |
| Q04 | Doppler: approach raises the received frequency | 60% | 83% | 71% | 45% | 33% | DOP |
| Q05 | A node is an always-zero fixed position | 48% | 75% | 58% | 30% | 17% | STW-2 |
| Q06 | Overlapping waves add with sign, then pass through | 52% | 79% | 62% | 35% | 25% | SUP |
| Q07 | Wave energy scales as amplitude squared | 44% | 67% | 54% | 30% | 17% | NRG |
| Q08 | Absolute pressure cannot dip below zero | 40% | 67% | 50% | 25% | 17% | WN-1 |
| Q09 | Lowest observed resonance need not be the fundamental | 40% | 62% | 50% | 25% | 17% | STW-3 |
| Q10 | Wave speed is set by the medium | 60% | 83% | 71% | 45% | 33% | WS-1 |
| Q11 | Sound needs a material medium (no vacuum) | 72% | 100% | 83% | 55% | 42% | SND |
| Q12 | A standing-wave pattern does not travel | 44% | 71% | 54% | 25% | 17% | STW-1 |
| Q13 | Amplitude does not change wave speed | 56% | 83% | 67% | 40% | 25% | WS-1 |
| Q14 | The disturbance propagates; the medium stays put | 48% | 75% | 58% | 30% | 17% | WN-1 |
| Q15 | One point cannot distinguish standing from travelling | 40% | 62% | 50% | 25% | 17% | STW-1 |
| Q16 | The flat instant is not the wave vanishing | 44% | 71% | 54% | 25% | 17% | STW-2 |
| Q17 | Two close frequencies beat at the difference | 52% | 79% | 62% | 35% | 25% | SUP |
| Q18 | The argument kx − ωt ties space and time | 44% | 71% | 54% | 25% | 17% | WN-3 |
| Q19 | Sound is longitudinal (medium moves along travel) | 56% | 83% | 67% | 40% | 25% | WN-2 |
| Q20 | A fixed-end reflection inverts | 44% | 67% | 54% | 25% | 17% | REF |
| Q21 | A wave carries the disturbance and its energy | 60% | 88% | 71% | 45% | 33% | WN-1 |
| Q22 | Open end: pressure node, displacement antinode | 40% | 58% | 50% | 25% | 17% | TUBE |
| Q23 | Fixed end inverts, free end stays upright | 48% | 71% | 58% | 30% | 17% | REF |
| Q24 | Reading a longitudinal displacement graph | 44% | 67% | 54% | 25% | 17% | WN-2 |
| Q25 | Higher frequency changes wavelength, not speed | 52% | 79% | 62% | 35% | 25% | WS-1 |
Q08, Q14, Q21 — Band WN-1, the wave-nature keystone. The wave-carries-the-medium, finite-speed, and below-zero-pressure probes sit among the lowest in the diagnostic, at 17% in Band D and 25–30% in Band C. Until what-actually-travels is settled, the bands that build on it cannot.
Q12, Q15, Q05, Q16 — the standing-wave cluster (STW-1, STW-2). The travelling-standing-wave and moving-node errors fall to 17–25% in Bands C and D and stay below 60% in Band B — this confusion is not confined to weaker students.
Q08 + Q20 — the L-CRIT lens; Q22, Q07, Q04 — the lower-confidence trio. Submissions accepting both the below-zero pressure curve and the upright fixed-end reflection fire the cross-cutting lens, reported as a cohort percentage. The three single-item bands (TUBE, NRG, DOP) are capped at provisional and read as directional, never settled.
I carried out a pilot test of the Physics Misconceptions Diagnostics with my Grade 11 (lower 6th) International Baccalaureate classes, as part of their revision for end of year exams. The tests covered Motion Foundations, Forces and Free-Body Diagrams - topics that are fundamental to the IB course as well as A’ level courses.
The tests were all set up by FundaFirst - all I had to do was point the students to web links. The students found the questions easy to access and to carry out. The information that came back from FundaFirst was incredibly useful, identifying areas where the class and/or individuals were weaker. These areas would have been much harder to identify without the tests. FundaFirst then provided concrete examples of how to address the misconceptions, with work sheets targeting these areas.
I will not hesitate to use FundaFirst’s diagnostic testing with future cohorts!
Fill in the form below. The Projectile & Circular diagnostic suits classes finishing or revising projectile motion and circular motion — the two-dimensional block that sits across kinematics and forces.
→You receive a class-specific diagnostic link and a short setup message you can paste directly to your students. No student logins needed.
→Share the link. The diagnostic takes about 25–30 minutes (24 questions, no calculator required, single sitting). In-class or take-home.
→Class heatmap, cohort summary, band profiles, and remediation toolkit emailed to you within 48 hours of class completion.
Share your details below and we'll set up the diagnostic link within 24 hours. No commitment — this is a free pilot designed for teacher use and classroom feedback.
The diagnostic is grounded in physics education research, including the work of Knight, Moore, Chabay & Sherwood, and Arons. A FundaFirst video on the early history of atomic theory was licensed by National Geographic Learning (Cengage) for a chemistry title.
The Oscillations & Waves diagnostic is strongest after the FundaFirst kinematics and forces work — the wave-speed and standing-wave reasoning leans on the vocabulary of speed, force, and graph-reading the earlier diagnostics build. Each diagnostic runs cleanly on its own too. Eight sister diagnostics are also available — Motion, Newton's Laws, Energy, Momentum, and Projectile & Circular, Static Electricity, Electric Fields, and Electric Potential — same format, same 48-hour turnaround.
View the Motion Diagnostic → View the Newton's Laws Diagnostic → View the Energy Diagnostic → View the Momentum Diagnostic → View the Projectile & Circular Diagnostic → View the Static Electricity Diagnostic → View the Electric Fields Diagnostic → View the Electric Potential Diagnostic →
The book behind these diagnostics — 89 of the predictable ways students misunderstand physics, with the exact wording to drop and the one to use instead.