Session T61: Excellence in Laboratory Instruction & Upper Division Courses

Prize Talk: Jonathan F. Reichert and Barbara Wolff-Reichert AwardUpgrading and Enhancing Advanced Undergraduate Physics Laboratories

Over the past 12 years, many of the advanced undergraduate physics laboratories at Francis Marion University (FMU) have been substantially upgraded and enhanced.  These improvements are largely the result of participation in three physics initiatives.  First, participation in three of the four Beyond the First Year of Physics (BFY) conferences provided opportunities to participate in 12 forty-minute workshops on advanced undergraduate physics experiments at each conference, in addition to presentations and breakout sessions on various advanced lab topics.  Second, participation in 14 Immersion Programs sponsored by the Advanced Laboratory Physics Association (ALPHA) provided in-depth two-to-three-day experiences, where faculty members were immersed in single advanced undergraduate physics experiments, to gain sufficient expertise to teach the experiments with confidence to their own students. Third, submission of ALPHA Immersion Equipment Grant proposals to the Jonathan F. Reichert Foundation enabled the purchase of advanced undergraduate physics equipment that would have otherwise been impossible to procure, especially for smaller institutions like FMU.  This talk will explain these three opportunities with sufficient depth, so that other physics faculty can participate in them to upgrade and enhance their own advanced undergraduate physics laboratories.   

Online Advanced Labs

At Arizona State University we have developed a fully online BS degree in Physics. A key component of the curriculum is a set of Advanced Lab courses, which include a suite of Nobel-prize experiments such as Interferometry, Zeeman effect, Cavendish Balance, Quantum Entanglement, etc. The experiments feature custom-built simulators that produce signals with the full scope of “imperfections” that comprise real measurements including: noise (Poisson, 1/f, drift); background; backlash; resolution and bandwidth limitations; aberrations, non-linearity, etc. These noise sources are all determined from real measurements and are simulated using semi-empirical functions and/or recorded images. We show examples of the simulator, plus overview videos, student worksheets, lab notebook and formal reports.   

Pedagogy of Plasma Processing

This project is focused on improving concept retention and understanding with the use of inquiryand project- based laboratory design. The construction of a probe for electric field measurement in an introductory electricity and magnetism course provides this design. The laboratory can be expanded to take up to four weeks or shortened to be a two-hour lab exercise. Pre and post assessments of student understanding are assessed for a class with the addition of the lab. The pre and post assessments allowed computation of learning gains in electromagnetic fields concepts. The responses to one of the concept test questions were studied as well as the overall learning gain. Average learning gains of 5% resulted from the activity as measured by five pre and post conceptual questions. These are promising, considering recent reports that students completing traditional laboratory activities feel they could be done without an understanding of the underpinning physics concepts.   

Teaching Circuits with Computer Fans - a Retrospective

For nearly a decade, we have explored using small computer fans as an effective method for teaching simple resistive circuits both qualitatively [1] and quantitatively [2]. The current through the fans is related to the rotational speed of the fans and allow multiple senses to be engaged (touch, sight, and hearing). The linear relationship between the operational current and applied voltage provides a nearly constant effective resistance for the fan.  We have also demonstrated that fans can also be used to explore RC circuits both qualitatively and quantitatively, where the fans act as the resistive elements as well as the indicator [3].  In this presentation, we overview teaching circuits using computer fans focusing on lessons learned, including finding student engagement, finding computer fans that work, and future directions.   

Interrelating Lagrangians, Hamiltonians, and Autonomous Systems of Differential Equations, using Computer Algebra

In order to facilitate education in upper-level physics courses a multi-purpose user-friendly program has been written in wxMaxima (software freely available) to incorporate the two functions: Lagrangians, quadratic or linear in the velocity components, and Hamiltonians. Here, as is often the case, neither function will depend explicitly on the time, t. The program also provides for the use of either independent or related (to the Hamiltonian) autonomous systems of differential equations. The user can input a Lagrangian, see the corresponding Euler-Lagrange equations, generalized momenta and (if it exists) the Hamiltonian which is the total energy. In addition, the user can obtain Hamilton's equations beginning with a Hamiltonian and generate solutions to those equations, in terms of algebraic expansions. For systems of autonomous differential equations arising independently of the Lagrangian or Hamiltonian formalisms, the user can find approximate (and in some cases, complete) computer-algebraic solutions near a specified value of, and as expansions to arbitrary order in t; and, moreover, in a form that can facilitate graphing. This paper has significant pedagogical value, for both instructors and students, in a number of upper-level courses in physics and is also useful for mathematics and engineering. Recent applications of the program are shown in the areas of classical mechanics and electromagnetism; and there is a description of its use in neural networks.   

CURE-ing in High School: Incorporating Original Research into a High School Physics Classroom

Course-embedded Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) have become popular methods of engaging students in research across smaller colleges in the USA. There is extensive scholarly literature on the benefits of research engagement within the college classroom. There is less literature on the implementation of this style of instruction in a high school setting. This talk will discuss how a CURE on the construction of a low-cost optical tweezing system was adapted from an upper-level college biophysics course for a high school Physics 2 class. Through this CURE, students worked to design and build a HeNe optical tweezer and custom inverted microscope with potential application in tweezing biomolecules, red blood cells, and observing Brownian motion. The students developed skills in grant writing, experimental design, and lasers. This is part of a larger initiative to give students access to a hands-on research experience through the high school's Young Researcher’s Program (YREP).   

Living Online: Computational Modeling and Lab Activities in Introductory Electricity and Magnetism

Post-pandemic online classes have evolved to be different from pre-pandemic online courses. It is increasingly required that instructors augment face-to-face instruction with online flexibility or full time online instruction. This move requires changes to the computational modeling activities as well as the lab activities in introductory physics. We will discuss how computational modeling activities and labs have been changed post-pandemic in a second-semester introductory physics course. In particular, we will address how real-time instructor trouble-shooting can be supplemented with scaffolding such as computational simulation and lab kits that can be peppered throughout the course.