Bulletin of the American Physical Society
Spring 2012 Meeting of the APS Ohio-Region Section
Volume 57, Number 4
Friday–Saturday, April 13–14, 2012; Columbus, Ohio
Session F4: Physics Education |
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Chair: James Sullivan, University of Cincinnati Room: Alpheus Smith Laboratory 1005 |
Saturday, April 14, 2012 8:00AM - 8:12AM |
F4.00001: Teaching Electronics with an Arduino Microcontroller Herbert Jaeger We have been teaching an electronics instrumentation laboratory course for well over 20 years. From the very beginning the central theme was interfacing physics apparatus to microcomputers, beginning with Apple and Intel-based PCs using some form of BASIC language and later moving to LabVIEW software and National Instruments data acquisition hardware. More recently we have begun to incorporate microcontrollers into our curriculum. We are using the Arduino platform, because it is open source, very affordable, and there exists a large community to turn to for help with problems of all sorts. Programming the Arduino is quickly learned, in particular by students who are familiar with introductory-level C or Java programming. We report on the capabilities of the Arduino and how we use it in our electronic instrumentation laboratory. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 14, 2012 8:12AM - 8:24AM |
F4.00002: Teaching Instrumentation Concepts by the Examination of Thermal Properties of Elastomers Timothy Vierheller Fundamental instrumentation concepts were taught using two important thermal techniques in characterizing elastomeric materials: Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and Thermal Gravimetric Analysis (TGA). Instrumentation concepts included the following: calibration, resolution, accuracy, and precision. Basic thermal properties (such as specific heat capacity, glass transition temperature, melting temperature, melting enthalpy, and decomposition temperature) of elastomeric materials were reviewed, as was how DSC and TGA measure these properties. Using this background, instrumentation concepts were examined using collected data and related statistical information. Materials examined included polyethylene, nitrile rubber, and a natural rubber-butadiene blend. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 14, 2012 8:24AM - 8:36AM |
F4.00003: Feynman's angular momentum paradox revisited Ben Yu-Kuang Hu, Brian Loeber We reexamine Feynman's angular momentum paradox, in which a cylinder of charge around a current carrying solenoid is set in rotational motion when the current is turned off (due to the induced electric field caused by the change in magnetic flux), apparently violating conservation of angular momentum. The standard explanation of the resolution of this paradox is that, when the electric current in the solenoid is on, the combination of the magnetic field from the current and the electric field from the charges results in non-zero angular momentum which is stored in the electromagnetic fields in the vicinity of the solenoid. This angular momentum is transferred to the charged cylinder when the current is turned off. However, we show that for certain geometries of the solenoid and position of the charges, the angular momentum in the vicinity of the solenoid is in fact {\bf zero} even when the solenoid carries electric current and hence magnetic field is present in the vicinity of the solenoid. We show that angular momentum is in fact still conserved, because the electromagnetic fields which radiate outwards from the solenoid after the current is turned off carry angular momentum which is opposite to the direction of the angular momentum imparted to the charge on the cylinder. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 14, 2012 8:36AM - 8:48AM |
F4.00004: What College Students Don't Know about Density D.J. Wagner, Sam Cohen, Adam Moyer, Elizabeth Carbone, Kathryn Merrymon As part of the development of a fluid statics assessment, our research group conducted clinical interviews with students in both conceptual physics and calculus-based introductory physics courses. What were intended as ``basic'' questions about density quickly became a significant focus of those interviews, as only one of the eight students interviewed demonstrated a confident understanding of mass density. Questions have since been added to the fluid assessment to probe the prevalence of these difficulties. In this talk, I will summarize our preliminary data and discuss future plans for the assessment and our instruction. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 14, 2012 8:48AM - 9:00AM |
F4.00005: The ``new'' International System of Units Gordon Aubrecht The CGPM has decided that, eventually, the ``explicit unit'' basis of the International System of Units (SI) will be replaced by the ``explicit-constant formulation,'' in which fixing certain physical constants will fix the base units exactly. How this is contemplated will be discussed in this talk. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 14, 2012 9:00AM - 9:12AM |
F4.00006: POOLkits: Applying Object Oriented Principles from Software Engineering to Physics Object Oriented Learning -- Preliminary Concepts Thomas Kassebaum, Gordon Aubrecht Object-oriented development depends upon the creation of generic pieces that can be built into more complex parts. In physics, we begin teaching basic principles and then develop more complex systems, a fertile environment to develop learning objects. Each learning object consists of observable quantities, such as the physical properties of a block of wood, and operators that act on the object, such as force. Additionally, each object can also include an assessment operator that evaluates the impact of the learning object on student comprehension. The physics object-oriented learning kits (POOLkits) will be developed to enhance student understanding of physics concepts, as well as, build a framework for developing a software object based on the physics concept. A POOLkit can be extended, similar to the concept of extending classes in object-oriented programming, as physics knowledge expands. The expectation for these POOLkits would be to provide physics students with a solid foundation in the first principles to be able to derive more complex formulae and have the understanding of the process with a secondary benefit of enhancing the object-oriented programming capabilities of physics students. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 14, 2012 9:12AM - 9:24AM |
F4.00007: Teaching Physics at a University in Finland James Sullivan From January through May, 2011 the author was able to teach physics courses in an engineering curriculum at a university in Helsinki, Finland. Many differences, both in the curriculum and the culture, were experienced during this period and these will be discussed in this paper. [Preview Abstract] |
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