Cited by 203Artificial Intelligence in EducationAcademic integrity and plagiarismArtificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education

The death of the short-form physics essay in the coming AI revolution

Open access
Yeadon, Will, Inyang, Oto-Obong, Mizouri, Arin, Peach, Alex, Testrow, Craig P·2023·Physics Education

Abstract

The latest AI language modules can produce original, high quality full short-form (300-word) Physics essays within seconds. These technologies such as ChatGPT and davinci-003 are freely available to anyone with an internet connection. In this work, we present evidence of AI generated short-form essays achieving First-Class grades on an essay writing assessment from an accredited, current university Physics module. The assessment requires students answer five open-ended questions with a short, 300-word essay each. Fifty AI answers were generated to create ten submissions that were independently marked by five separate markers. The AI generated submissions achieved an average mark of 71 ± 2 % , in strong agreement with the current module average of 71 ± 5 % . A typical AI submission would therefore most-likely be awarded a First Class, the highest classification available at UK universities. Plagiarism detection software returned a plagiarism score between 2 ± 1 % (Grammarly) and 7 ± 2 % (TurnitIn). We argue that these results indicate that current natural language processing AI represent a significant threat to the fidelity of short-form essays as an assessment method in Physics courses.

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  • Lexical density is an indicator of information richness and compactness.

    “Lexical density is an indicator of information richness and compactness. 57,58,59”

    From Style, sentiment, and quality of undergraduate writing in the AI era: A cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis of 4,820 authentic empirical reports (2025) · cites this paper as [58]

    The Overview (section 3.1) discusses perplexity as a measure used in AI-text detection, while Written quality (section 3.2) discusses readability and editing. Searches for “lexical density,” “information richness,” and the proportion of content words found no passage defining lexical density or linking it to information richness and compactness. (LLM, conf=0.75)

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Authors
Yeadon, W., Inyang, O.-O., Mizouri, A., Peach, A., & Testrow, C. P.
Affiliations
Durham University (GB)
Corresponding author
Yeadon, Will
Venue
Physics Education
Published
2023-04-05
Volume
58
Issue
3
Pages
035027
ISSN
  • 0031-9120 (ISSN-L)
  • 1361-6552
OpenAlex
W4362551436
Cited by
199
References
13
Citations by year
2026: 23 · 2025: 54 · 2024: 68 · 2023: 54
FWCI
46.70
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Physics Education (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Durham Research Online (Durham University) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
  • Durham Research Online (Durham University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • arXiv (Cornell University)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Artificial Intelligence in Education
  • Social Sciences › Safety Research › Academic integrity and plagiarism
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Health Informatics › Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education
Keywords
AI-generated text, ChatGPT, physics assessment, plagiarism detection, academic integrity, natural language processing, university physics education

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