The principal research question used to focus this
investigation asked: What are the common difficulties
that students experience when trying to learn about
radiation and radioactivity? Prior research (see Part I)suggests that one student learning difficulty with these
topics stems from their inability to correctly differentiate
between irradiation and contamination, believing that an
object exposed to ionizing radiation will become
radioactive. In addition our research suggests that half of
college students enrolled in introductory physics courses
believe that orbital electrons are causally related to the
radioactive state of atoms and to the decay process.
Making matters worse, an equal percent of these
students believe that the mass and volume of a
radioactive substance will decrease in the period of a
half-life.