Representation use and strategy choice in physics problem solving

In this paper,we examine student success on three variants of a test item given in different representational formats (verbal,pictorial,and graphical),with an isomorphic problem statement. we confirm results from recent papers where it is mentioned that physics students' problem-solving competence can vary with representational format and that solutions can be triggered by particular details of the representation. previous studies are complemented with a fine grained analysis of solution strategies. we find that students use different problem-solving strategies,depending on the representational format in which the problem is stated. © 2012 american physical society.