Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS March Meeting 2022
Volume 67, Number 3
Monday–Friday, March 14–18, 2022; Chicago
Session W27: Physics Education at All StagesDiversity Education Recordings Available Undergrad Friendly
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Sponsoring Units: FEd Chair: Eric Brewe, FEd Room: McCormick Place W-187C |
Thursday, March 17, 2022 3:00PM - 3:12PM |
W27.00001: Science and Engineering Saturday Seminars: Fostering connections between K-12 educators and University researchers Shubha Tewari In this talk, I propose to tell you about a successful ongoing venture organized by the STEM Education Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Every Spring semester for the past 16 years, the STEM Education Institute at UMass Amherst has offered the Science and Engineering Saturday Seminars, a series of four-hour workshops held on Saturdays in which University faculty and students present their current research and innovations to K-12 educators through lectures and hands-on activities. Attending these workshops enables teachers to stay up to date with research advances, and an experienced teacher is on hand to assist attendees in adapting the material presented by researchers into lesson plans for their classrooms. Teachers can either choose to attend individual workshops and receive professional development points, necessary to maintain their certification to teach, or register for the entire set to receive three graduate credits through the continuing education program of the University of Massachusetts. In turn, University faculty/researchers have the opportunity to communicate their research to a broader audience, and to provide teachers with the materials and means to spark the interest of a new generation of prospective scientists. I will present data collected from exit surveys of teachers, and discuss what makes a workshop a success. Presented materials are made available online through a Creative Commons license, and I will review download data on these. |
Thursday, March 17, 2022 3:12PM - 3:24PM |
W27.00002: Collaborative and Competitive Programs Piloted at Physics Unlimited Pavel P Shibayev Physics Unlimited is a volunteer-based non-profit with the mission of fostering both collaborative and competitive mindsets in high school students worldwide by offering accessible enrichment programs in introductory and advanced physics. Our volunteers at universities across the US develop educational materials, notably problems for two types of competitions we host annually and curricula for learners underrepresented in physics, or whose high schools do not offer it. Our ultimate goal is to democratize access to entry into the field and to provide a sustainable, supportive ecosystem for curious minds who wish to be a part of the global physics community regardless of their background. This talk will focus on the practical approaches we are spearheading to achieve our long-term vision. |
Thursday, March 17, 2022 3:24PM - 3:36PM |
W27.00003: Being Human in Physics (I stole this title from a program at Amherst College, because I liked it a lot.) Vernita Gordon A few years ago, the physics department at UT Austin learned that women undergraduates were leaving the physics major at roughly twice the rate of men leaving the major. Through interviews with current and former students we learned that this was largely the result of negative peer interactions in settings where faculty and graduate students were not present. Although I do not have data to support this, I suspect that students other than women are probably also discouraged and feel alienated from the physics major as a result of negative peer interactions as well, and that this is likely to disproportionately affect members of under-represented groups. Under support of a Provost's Teaching Fellowship, I have been working to grow a supportive community for physics undergraduates and to teach the undergraduates the cognitive tools and responses to shape their environment positively and to respond constructively to difficult situations. This includes bias incidents such as those reported by undergraduate women, but it also includes the intrinsic academic difficulty of physics as a discipline. This has had 2 main thrusts so far: (1) I have been running a mentoring program in which new (first-year or transfer) undergraduates are in a group with an upper-division physics major who acts as a peer mentor. This was very popular with participants last year. (2) A seminar class is intended to build a supportive community among students and address many of the non-academic things that are important for success and happiness in physics, like feeling different, how to recognize and respond to bias, how to handle academic struggles and recognize when you're good at physics, and what role models and career options are available with a physics degree. These are things that can affect all students but have been shown to disproportionately affect people from under-represented groups. |
Thursday, March 17, 2022 3:36PM - 3:48PM |
W27.00004: Enhancing Computational Instruction for Physics Majors: Developing Tools for Assessment Kendra L Letchworth-Weaver, Klebert B Feitosa, Keigo Fukumura, Harold Butner, Gabriel Niculescu Computer programming is an essential skill for physics majors seeking employment in a highly technological world. The advent of "big data" in business, engineering, and traditional STEM fields requires graduates proficient in data acquisition, storage, manipulation, and analysis. Physics departments are responding to this trend by integrating computational instruction into their undergraduate programs, but questions remain regarding the effectiveness of this training. In the Department of Physics and Astronomy at James Madison University, we have developed a set of learning objectives related to computational skills and integrated these objectives throughout our curriculum, primarily in laboratory courses. Our team has also developed an assessment tool, consisting of multiple choice and free response questions, that can quantitatively measure students' computational skills within the context of physics. We have now administered the assessment to four cohorts of senior physics majors, providing valuable data on the efficacy of our curriculum changes and on the validity of our assessment instrument. We will discuss both the successes and challenges we encountered as we seek to enhance computational instruction and evaluate student learning improvement in our department. |
Thursday, March 17, 2022 3:48PM - 4:00PM |
W27.00005: Do peer instructors provide better explanations? Comparing perceived explanation quality between different instructor types Joseph Olsen, Charles Ruggieri, Debbie Andres Universities use instructors with varying levels of physics expertise for undergraduate physics instruction, including faculty members, graduate teaching assistants, and undergraduate peer instructors. This study examines the effects of instructor type on students' ratings of explanation quality. We collected written explanations to common introductory physics questions from highly recommended instructors of each type. Students enrolled in an introductory physics course made pairwise comparisons of the written explanations until a rank order could be generated for each student participant. We determined if instructor type could determine placement in a student's rank order using ordinal regression. Using a relative placement algorithm, we extracted a general rank order for the explanations that reflects consensus opinion on the relative quality of the explanations. We present the results as a commentary on the relative effectiveness of different instructor types on providing explanations that students perceive as good explanations. |
Thursday, March 17, 2022 4:00PM - 4:12PM |
W27.00006: In-class hierarchical team model as a no-cost strategy to improve student success: Integrated peer leadership program Eliza Morris, Mikkel H Jensen, Sayonita Ghosh Hajra Introductory STEM classes can pose significant hurdles to college students, often disproportionately so for groups of traditionally underserved students, such as first-generation students. Several strategies, including using active learning modalities, can improve student success and mitigate the high failure rate in such courses. But how do you effectively implement active learning without added cost in very large lecture sections? |
Thursday, March 17, 2022 4:12PM - 4:24PM |
W27.00007: Incorporating lessons on diversity and inclusion in introductory undergraduate physics courses. Jennifer Pearce Roger Williams University began its Diversity and Inclusion Fellows program to support faculty development and adoption of classroom lessons and activities to help students understand how the relationship between race and power continues to shape their chosen disciplines. Physics faculty who participated developd a research paper based scaffolded assignment for first semester introductory physics laboratory courses. This material was implemented in both algebra and calculus based courses. The pedagogical framework and details of the assignment are presented as well as examples of student responses. |
Thursday, March 17, 2022 4:24PM - 4:36PM |
W27.00008: Student Storytelling in Physics Courses to Promote Engagement and Diversity Roberto C Ramos Knowledge is better assimilated and remembered when framed in a story. I will report the results of student story-telling as a pedagogical technique in physics that I have applied to four college courses: a two-semester Introductory Physics course, Modern Physics, and Statistical Mechanics. Storytelling can enhance the learning of physics by providing context, promoting student engagement and promoting diversity by celebrating the unique contributions of physicists from different cultures, ethnicities and gender. As part of course requirements, students researched biographies of physicists and presented 5-7 minute summaries - either in youtube videos or live talks, that went beyond a narration of facts and events. Students were asked to frame stories according to the 4 C's of storytelling (character, conflict, context, conquest) and focus on what motivated physicists to study physics in their youth, what unique challenges they faced, their contributions and hobbies apart from physics, and how they interacted with other scientists in their time. A special effort was made to promote story-telling of the background and contributions of women and minorities in physics. I will report on student responses and reactions to this effort, based on blind surveys, exam results and general observations. |
Thursday, March 17, 2022 4:36PM - 4:48PM |
W27.00009: Physics students who teach cultivate a deeper sense of professional identity Paul J Simmonds, Megan Frary, Donna Llewellyn, Julianne A Wenner Historically, graduate education’s goal was to prepare future academics, and has thus focused on the creation and conservation of disciplinary knowledge. However, today’s reality is that most STEM graduate students (GSs) go on to non-academic careers. As educators, it should be our aim to equip GSs for success, regardless of career aspirations. It is therefore essential that we shift our focus towards preparing a new type of scholar – one with a strong professional identity – rather than preparing a person for a specific type of career. We argue that helping students cultivate a professional identity has been largely missing from physics graduate education. |
Thursday, March 17, 2022 4:48PM - 5:00PM |
W27.00010: Lenz's law, back emf, and induced current Lianxi Ma, sheng wang We use an example to show that the induced current in a solenoid resulting from changing magnetic field cannot be determined by simply applying Lenz's law when the solenoid's inductance is significant. Pointing this out is worthwhile because in some examples and exercises in physics textbooks the back emf caused by the inductor is likely to be ignored by educators. Quantitative calculation shows that induced current direction is determined by magnetic field changing frequency, resistance, and inductance in the circuit. |
Thursday, March 17, 2022 5:00PM - 5:12PM |
W27.00011: Investigating Orbits of a Textbook Mass-Pulley System Joseph S Brunner, Josh Margolis, Steven Tarr, Daniel Soto, Daniel I Goldman A common classical mechanics introductory textbook problem highlighting coupled motion consists of a moving puck on a frictionless surface connected to a hanging mass via string threaded through a hole in the surface's center. A rigorous analysis via numerical integration of system equations for different puck-hanger mass ratios and initial velocities reveals complex trajectories with possible precession. In near-frictionless simulations, we observe orbits in the form of decaying circular spirals and ellipses that gradually transition into circular spirals. We further investigate these trajectories by developing an apparatus using a puck of dry ice to induce the Leidenfrost effect on the tabletop, creating a near-frictionless interaction. We vary the mass ratio from 0.4 to 2.0 by attaching different weights to the string tied to the puck. We implement a spherical pendulum to impart a speed from 0 to 3.5m/s at azimuthal angles from 0° to 90°. Decaying circular spirals are the dominant trajectories for our tested conditions, as predicted by numerical simulation. However, for a small set of initial azimuthal angles, we observe short-lived elliptical orbits that apsidally precess before falling into the same inward spirals noted previously. |
Thursday, March 17, 2022 5:12PM - 5:24PM |
W27.00012: Design, Construction, and test of an electrometer to discriminate positive and negative ions. Magdalena Waleska Aldana Segura, Julian Felix Valdez On the study of electrostatics, a common issue is to distinguish between positive and negative electric charges and to demonstrate that only two kinds of electric charge exist. To help students from the Electricity and Magnetism courses developed at International Elementary Particle Laboratory at the Universidad de Guanajuato and the STEAM program from Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, on these studies we have designed, constructed, and tested an electronic electrometer. |
Thursday, March 17, 2022 5:24PM - 5:36PM |
W27.00013: Development of the short-term integrated program of education of materials science and human skills training -Case study of Professional development Consortium for Computational Materials Scientists in Japan- Yayoi Terada We develop PCoMS Innovative Professional Development program and support the graduate students and young researchers in materials science (MS) to overcome the gaps among fundamental researches, application researches and practical applications. Onsite PCoMS 3day seminar is one of unique subjects in our program to learn the following 3 categories at once; wide knowledge of computational materials science (CMS), high-performance computing techniques, and human skills and transferable skills (HSTS) needed for researchers in both industry and academia. In this seminar, we integrate “scientific lectures” with “HSTS trainings and group discussion”. |
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