Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2014 Annual Meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Section of the APS
Volume 59, Number 9
Friday–Sunday, October 3–5, 2014; University Park, Pennsylvania
Session H6: Physics Education |
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Chair: Stephen Van Hook, Pennsylvania State University Room: Life Sciences Building 011 |
Sunday, October 5, 2014 9:00AM - 9:36AM |
H6.00001: Improving student understanding of physics through research Invited Speaker: Chandralekha Singh Despite our best and most sincere efforts, there is an alarming disconnect between what we teach and what students learn and understand. The goal of physics education research is to help close this gap. I will discuss, using my own research and activities as examples, some important components of physics education research. My own research has emphasized student understanding of introductory and advanced concepts. We are working on developing and evaluating strategies that actively engage students in the learning process. I will summarize some of the findings. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, October 5, 2014 9:36AM - 9:48AM |
H6.00002: ISLE-inspired Pilot Program at Princeton University Katerina Visnjic, Carolyn Sealfon, Evelyn Laffey, Catherine Riihimaki In an effort to enhance the traditional calculus-based introductory physics course at Princeton University, an Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) inspired pilot program is underway. In the first year, two lab sections performed ISLE-inspired labs and activities in class, while the remaining ten sections received traditional instruction. We strove for a random selection of students. To assess the effectiveness of the pilot program, we conducted focus interviews to probe how students felt about the course and how relevant it was in their everyday lives. In this talk, we will describe in more detail the pedagogical approach used in the experimental sections, and the expansion of the pilot to include more sections this year. Using the interviews and more quantitative data, we will compare student learning in the experimental sections and the traditional sections. We will conclude with future plans. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, October 5, 2014 9:48AM - 10:00AM |
H6.00003: Exploring student understanding of the linkage between energy concepts in physics and chemistry Beth Lindsey, Megan Nagel Potential energy is a conceptually rich topic presenting many difficulties for students. One key feature of potential energy is that it is a function of the distance between interacting objects. This concept is relevant to understanding potential energy in both physical and chemical contexts. Data from student responses to written surveys and small-group interviews reveal that students do not spontaneously make connections between ideas they have about energy from physics classes and the understanding of energy that they develop in chemistry. I will describe data that provide insights into students' in-the-moment reasoning as they are confronted with and struggle to resolve the mismatch between their energy ideas from physics and chemistry. I will also describe the development and implementation of a sequence of questions that appears to aid students in drawing connections between energy concepts across the disciplines. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, October 5, 2014 10:00AM - 10:12AM |
H6.00004: In Through the Out Door - Physics in Introductory Labs Gregory Puskar Students typically regard physics laboratory as a necessary evil. One frequently voiced reason for this dissatisfaction is a perceived lack of relevance. In spite of this, the same experiments with the same methods of presentation persist, hiding the utility of many interesting and broadly useful concepts from most students. Students in the early stages of their academic careers have had little or no exposure to ideas and concepts in their major. How can they be expected to see the utility of the physics they are learning? Direction is needed to help them relate physics to their world. A selection of changes to standard physics laboratories that aim to improve student attitudes and engage them more deeply will be presented. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, October 5, 2014 10:12AM - 10:24AM |
H6.00005: Learn Physics by Programming in Haskell Scott Walck We describe a method for deepening a student's understanding of basic physics by asking the student to express physical ideas in a functional programming language. The method is implemented in a second-year course in computational physics at Lebanon Valley College. We argue that the structure of Newtonian mechanics is clarified by its expression in a language (Haskell) that supports higher-order functions and types. In electromagnetic theory, the type signatures of functions that calculate electric and magnetic fields clearly express the functional dependency on the charge and current distributions that produce the fields. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, October 5, 2014 10:24AM - 10:36AM |
H6.00006: Animations for Introductory Physics and Astronomy Gallis Michael The Animations for Introductory Physics and Astronomy project at Penn State Schuylkill was initiated to help students visualize aspects of 3-dimensional situations where traditional static drawings were seen as inadequate. The animations have been used to portray a wide variety of dynamical systems and processes for physics and astronomy topics typically presented in the advanced high school through introductory college level. Additional applications of the animation technology will be presented, including using more extensive animations for semester mini-themes and ``What's wrong'' tasks using artificial video for video analysis. In addition, dissemination of the animations through the project web server at http://phys23p.sl.psu.edu/phys\textunderscore anim/Phys\textunderscore anim.htm and through the project YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/mrg3 will be discussed. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, October 5, 2014 10:36AM - 10:48AM |
H6.00007: Electrical resistance and connectivity of graphs Mikhail Kagan One of the basic tasks related to electrical circuits is computing equivalent resistance. In some simple cases, this task can handled by combining resistors connected either in series or in parallel, until the original circuit reduces to a single element. When this is not possible, one resorts to the ``heavy artillery'' of Kirchhoff's rules. What traditionally receives little to no attention in the introductory E{\&}M class is the method of nodal potentials. At the same time, it may often be both mathematically and conceptually simpler. In this talk, I will review the method of nodal potentials and use it to find the unknown currents and voltages in the Wheatstone-Bridge-like circuit. At the end, I will derive - in a closed form - the equivalent resistance of a generic circuit. Given the breadth of physical intuition that we have about electrical circuits, this result can provide a great deal of insight into some important questions of graph theory (e.g. connectivity issues, random walks on graphs etc.), as well as its applications to computer science. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, October 5, 2014 10:48AM - 11:00AM |
H6.00008: The trials and tribulations of building a phase-sensitive detector with an Arduino microcontroller Kevin Schultz In the last few years we have seen a proliferation of relatively inexpensive devices that can be used for data acquisition. In addition to having high resolution and multiple channels, these devices require nothing more than a USB port to communicate with a computer. All of these attributes make these devices perfect for an undergraduate laboratory. Despite their simplicity, they have some costly aspects. Most of these devices, including the popular Arduino series of microcontrollers, do not function easily as signal sources. In this talk, I will describe the challenges I faced making a self-contained, phase-sensitive detector (PSD) using the Arduino/Processing device and language families. The goal of the project was to create a phase-sensitive detector that was cheap, easy to program, and used no external components beyond a few passive components like resistors and capacitors. The pedagogical hope was to use this popular platform, or others like it, to teach undergraduates the important technique of PSD. A two-phase PSD was successfully implemented, but to overcome the technical difficulties inherent in the goals will require the use of advanced programming techniques like ``bit-banging,'' hardware/software interrupts, and careful memory management. [Preview Abstract] |
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