Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2017
Volume 62, Number 1
Saturday–Tuesday, January 28–31, 2017; Washington, DC
Session H2: Topics in Physics EducationUndergraduate
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Sponsoring Units: FEd Room: Maryland B |
Sunday, January 29, 2017 8:30AM - 8:42AM |
H2.00001: QuarkNet: Benefits for Teachers, Their Students and Physicists Marjorie Bardeen The QuarkNet Collaboration has forged nontraditional relationships among particle physicists, high school teachers and their students. QuarkNet centers are located at 50$+$ universities and labs across the U.S. and Puerto Rico. We provide professional development for teachers and create opportunities for teachers and students to engage in particle physics data investigations and join research teams. Students develop scientific knowledge and habits of mind by working alongside scientists to make sense of the world using authentic experimental data. Our program is based a classroom vision where teaching strategies emulate closely the way scientists build knowledge through inquiry. We look at how student engagement in research and masterclasses develops an understanding about the process of scientific discovery and science using current scientific data. We also look at ways and to what extent teachers provide scientific discovery and science practices for students and how QuarkNet contributes to the professionalism of participating teachers. Also, we describe success factors that enhance local center programs and describe important benefits of the program that flow to university faculty. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, January 29, 2017 8:42AM - 8:54AM |
H2.00002: Driving from Chicago to Buenos Aires: instrumentation courses during a road trip across the Americas Federico Izraelevitch The Escaramujo Project (www.escaramujo.net) was a series of hands-on laboratory courses on High Energy Physics and Astroparticle Instrumentation, in eight Latinamerican Institutions. The Physicist Federico Izraelevitch traveled on a van with his wife and dogs from Chicago to Buenos Aires teaching these courses. During these sessions, groups of advanced undergraduate and graduate students built a modern cosmic ray detector based on plastic scintillators and SiPMs, specifically designed for this project. With the detector as a common thread, they were able to understand the designing principles and the underlying Physics involved, build the device, start it up, characterize it, acquire data and analyze it, in the way of real particle Physics experiment. After the five-days courses, a functional detector remained at each institution to train future students and to support and enable local research activities. About a hundred talented and highly motivated students were reached out with the initiative. Besides the aims to awaken vocations in science, technology and engineering, The Escaramujo Project was an effort to strengthen the integration of academic institutions in Latin America within the international scientific community. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, January 29, 2017 8:54AM - 9:06AM |
H2.00003: Start Talking Science: A model for STEM communication events Christina Love Start Talking Science is an annual public event where STEM researchers present posters aimed at a non-technical audience. It was founded in 2013 by a coalition of science communication advocates with varying technical backgrounds from almost every major university in the Philadelphia area. Our mission is to increase public awareness of -- and interest in -- local cutting-edge STEM research while also strengthening the science communication skills of STEM researchers. All STEM researchers, including students and seasoned professionals, are invited to present their research; however they must participate in our review process which focuses on how to communicate their science to a general audience. Start Talking Science will be presented as a model for science communication events in other cities with details about the first three annual events and our review process. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, January 29, 2017 9:06AM - 9:18AM |
H2.00004: Gravitational Wave Detection in the Introductory Lab Lior M. Burko Great physics breakthroughs are rarely included in the introductory physics course. General relativity and binary black hole coalescence are no different, and can be included in the introductory course only in a very limited sense. However, we can design activities that directly involve the detection of GW150914, the designation of the Gravitation Wave signal detected on September 14, 2015, thereby engage the students in this exciting discovery directly. The activities naturally do not include the construction of a detector or the detection of gravitational waves. Instead, we design it to include analysis of the data from GW150914, which includes some interesting analysis activities for students of the introductory course. The same activities can be assigned either as a laboratory exercise or as a computational project for the same population of students. The analysis tools used here are simple and available to the intended student population. It does not include the sophisticated analysis tools, which were used by LIGO to carefully analyze the detected signal. However, these simple tools are sufficient to allow the student to get important results. We have successfully assigned this lab project for students of the introductory course with calculus at Georgia Gwinnett College. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, January 29, 2017 9:18AM - 9:30AM |
H2.00005: Teaching Nuclear Physics in a General Education Curriculum Shelly R. Lesher The general public is unaware how physics shapes the world. This is especially true for nuclear physics, where many people are scared of the words ``nuclear'' and ``radiation''. To combat these perceptions, the Physics Department at the University of Wisconsin -- La Crosse teaches a general education class on nuclear weapons, energy, and policy in society. This includes the social, economic, cultural, and political aspects surrounding the development of nuclear weapons and their place in the world, especially in current events. This talk will discuss the course, how it has grown, and sample student responses. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, January 29, 2017 9:30AM - 9:42AM |
H2.00006: Undergraduate Research in Physics as a course for Engineering and Computer Science Majors James O'Brien, Franz Rueckert, Greg Sirokman Undergraduate research has become more and more integral to the functioning of higher educational institutions. At many institutions undergraduate research is conducted as capstone projects in the pure sciences, however, science faculty at some schools (including that of the authors) face the challenge of not having science majors. Even at these institutions, a select population of high achieving engineering students will often express a keen interest in conducting pure science research. Since a foray into science research provides the student the full exposure to the scientific method and scientific collaboration, the experience can be quite rewarding and beneficial to the development of the student as a professional. To this end, the authors have been working to find new contexts in which to offer research experiences to non- science majors, including a new undergraduate research class conducted by physics and chemistry faculty. An added benefit is that these courses are inherently interdisciplinary. Students in the engineering and computer science fields step into physics and chemistry labs to solve science problems, often invoking their own relevant expertise. In this paper we start by discussing the common themes and outcomes of the course. We then discuss three particular projects that were conducted with engineering students and focus on how the undergraduate research experience enhanced their already rigorous engineering curriculum. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, January 29, 2017 9:42AM - 9:54AM |
H2.00007: Instruction of Multidisciplinary Content in Introductory Courses Saami J. Shaibani There has been an ever-increasing emphasis on the integration of material in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics during the past decade or so. However, there are two major requirements for accomplishing the effective delivery of such multidisciplinary content in the classroom: having high levels of expertise in all of the subjects; and, having the ability to combine the separate fields in a consistent manner without compromising academic purity. The research reported here involves a teacher with this skill set and it includes an example from kinematics, which is initially explored with standard treatment of concepts in mechanics and then developed with analysis employing algebra. As often happens, the non-trivial nature of the result in this case does not readily allow students to have a sense that the physics-based outcome is correct. This shortfall is remedied by adopting a complementary approach with geometry and calculus, which adds an independent perspective that reassures students by confirming the validity of the original answer. The enhanced quality of instruction achieved with the above methodology produces many benefits, including greater student understanding and more opportunities for active involvement by students in the learning process. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, January 29, 2017 9:54AM - 10:06AM |
H2.00008: ABSTRACT WITHDRAWN |
Sunday, January 29, 2017 10:06AM - 10:18AM |
H2.00009: Efficient Generation and Use of Power Series for Broad Application. Joseph Rudmin, James Sochacki A brief history and overview of the Parker-Sockacki Method of Power Series generation is presented. This method generates power series to order $n$ in time $n^{2}$ for any system of differential equations that has a power series solution. The method is simple enough that novices to differential equations can easily learn it and immediately apply it. Maximal absolute error estimates allow one to determine the number of terms needed to reach desired accuracy. Ratios of coefficients in a solution with global convergence differ signficantly from that for a solution with only local convergence. Divergence of the series prevents one from overlooking poles. The method can always be cast in polynomial form, which allows separation of variables in almost all physical systems, facilitating exploration of hidden symmetries, and is implicitly symplectic. [Preview Abstract] |
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