Student resources in reasoning about measurement uncertainty while working with the Projectile Data Lab PhET simulation

Understanding concepts and practices of measurement uncertainty is a core competency of physicists and engineers, and many physics lab courses aim to have students learn these ideas. However, there is strong evidence that this goal is often not met. To address the challenge of improving students' proficiency with measurement uncertainty concepts and practices, we developed a new, noise-enhanced PhET simulation named Projectile Data Lab by incorporating statistical noise into the Projectile Motion simulation, as well as relevant activities for how instructors can use this simulation in their physics lab courses. We conducted think-aloud interviews where students worked through the activities with the simulation. We subsequently constructed a measurement uncertainty framework based on the resource model, which we used to identify productive ideas that students have about measurement uncertainty while working on the simulation. This presentation will report these resources we found from the student think-aloud interviews, which can be used for the instructors to build on to enhance students' learning experience in introductory physics lab courses.