Pre-university students’ conceptions regarding radiation and radioactivity in a medical context

Figures & data

Table 1. Participants interviewed on student conceptions with regard to radiation and radioactivity in a medical context.

City	Teacher training background	Teacher experience in years	Student age	Students’ average physics grades*	Student gender
Haarlem	University	10	15 15	6.5 7.5	M M
Schagen	Higher vocational degree	17	15 16	6 6	F M
Haarlemmermeer	Higher vocational degree	3	15 16	9 9	F M
Tilburg	University	32	14 15	7 5	F M
Nijmegen	University	19	15 16	7.5 5	F M
Gouda	University	18	14 15	9 9	F F

* The physics grades of the students are considered to be an indication of their overall achievement level in physics at the time of the interview (ranging between 1 and 10; a grade below 6 is considered to be unsatisfactory and 10 is the highest possible grade).

Table 2. Student conceptions of upper level pre-university students regarding radiation and radioactivity from both the literature review and our interviews.

	Categorised by the source of the conception
	Student conceptions based on the inability of human senses to detect ionising radiation and radioactivity directly	References	Number participants mentioning the conception
			Students (12)	Teachers (6)
1	Radiation is not natural.	2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11	2	1
2	All electrical devices emit harmful radiation.	4, 7, 9	4	0
3	Radiation is emitted by living creatures and helps us to detect feelings.	4, 7	0	0
4	Light is different from radiation.	1, 4, 5, 7, 11	3	3
5	Radiation is responsible for many environmental problems.	1, 4, 6, 7	0	0
6	Radiation of natural sources is helpful, radiation of nuclear waste is harmful.	1, 9, 11	0	0
7	X-rays should be extracted from air in order to reduce radiation risk.	8	1	0
8	All medical imaging technologies and all medical treatments use harmful radiation.	New, from interviews	9	3
9	Radiation is seen as something independent of the source of radiation. Radiation exists, like any other particle.	New, from interviews	6	3
10	Radiation has a chemical source, being made during chemical processes and absorbed by chemical substances. Chemotherapy is an example of this.	New, from interviews	9	1
11	Ionising radiation is radiation emitted by ions	New, from interviews	2	0
12	There is no background radiation or if there is, its pollution or from nuclear accidents.	New, from interviews	0	3
13	The properties of α-, β, or EM-radiation are the same.	New, from interviews	0	1
Student conceptions based on the stochastic nature of decay
14	Temperature affects radioactivity. Decay rates of any radioactive substance decrease as temperature increases.	9	0	0
15	A cell cannot be alive as long as the half-life of potassium-40. This means that radiation cannot occur.	9	0	0
16	After one half-life, half of a radioactive sample disappears.	2, 8	3	0
17	Isotopes with long half-lives are more unstable.	2	0	0
18	Radiation is dangerous independent of the radiation dose.	1, 2, 6, 10, 11	5	1
19	Atoms cannot be changed from one element to another.	6	0	0
20	Once a material is radioactive, it is radioactive forever.	6	0	0
21	Radiation might accumulate in the human body.	8, 11	0	2
22	Radiation can kill instantly, just as in Hollywood movies.	New, from interviews	0	2
Student conceptions based on language difficulties
23	Radiation is the same as radiating particles.	1, 4, 5, 7, 10	10	1
24	irradiation can lead to contamination.	1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10	8	6
25	If an object is exposed to ionising radiation, it becomes radioactive.	1, 2, 3, 9, 10	0	0
	Boyes and Stanisstreet (1994) Cao and Dominguez Castineiras (2016) Colclough et al. (2011)	Eijkelhof (1996) Lijnse et al. (1990) Nakiboǧlu and Tekin (2006) Neumann and Hopf (2012)	Plotz (2016) Sesen and Elif (2010) Millar & Gill (1996) Rego & Peralta (2006)

Table 3. Student problems based on the inability of the human senses to detect ionising radiation and radioactivity directly.

		Quotes	Number of teachers mentioning the difficulty
1	Relationship between activity and number of radioactive isotopes and the relationship between activity and the slope of a N,t-diagram	Activity, they have the feeling, that it’s the number of particles that are still there, they don’t realise it is caused by the change in the number of particles.	4
2	Half-value thickness causes many problems as this depends on both the properties of the radiation and the material.	They understand that the dust is twice as thick, but they also have to use the energy of the photon that comes out of it, and then they often have to interpolate the results, and then it gets bad.	3
3	Penetration depth versus half-value thickness. Students struggle with differentiating between these two quantities.	Half-value thickness and penetration depth, yes, they should look at it differently for each particle. They don’t make that difference right away, no.	3
Student problems based on the stochastic nature of decay
4	Assessing risks, students think radioactive decay is always dangerous.	They see it as dangerous, no risk assessment. And that in combination with radiation, because it’s abstract.	1
5	Students have to work with logarithms, and find this difficult.	Insufficient mathematics skills to apply logarithms causes problems.	4
Student problems based on the complexity of the topic
6	Many new quantities, mixing up all unknown quantities with which they do not have any hands on experience.	What I find very difficult for students is that there are so many extremely similar concepts.	1
7	Many new units, of which students have never heard before.	You have J/kg, Gy, Sv and with activity you have Bq while it’s basically per second, yes they have a problem with that. There are even those that use Hz as unit.	4
8	Students have problems with the many mental steps they have to go through when working on assignments.	That’s also because there are too many mental steps, but they’re all very simple mental steps, but there are a lot of them.	2

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