• Journal of Science Education
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.569-584
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• 2014

The Purpose of this study was an analysis of high school student's understanding level about concepts of special relativity through in-depth interview. The 8 participants were 10th grade students in H high school in Ulsan city, who were interviewed and analyzed in the results of the interview about basic concepts of special relativity using achievement checklist in 6 situations(principle of constancy of light velocity, principle of relativity, relativity of simultaneity, garage paradox, rocket paradox). As results of the checklist, the participants showed high achievement in the content level of simple phenomena and simple concepts related to special relativity. But they showed low achievement in the concept level for fundamental understanding of special relativity. As results of the interview, it was found that the participants decided the order of events depending on their intuition and had a difficulty to apply the coordinate system to real situation, even though they mathematically understood it. In addition, some participants who could not understand the inertial coordinate system explained paradoxes of relativity depending on their intuition and had learner's chaos. Finally, though high school students usually being in formal operational stage, some students had difficulty to draw phenomena of space and time in two dimensional plane.