Bulletin of the American Physical Society
Joint Spring 2013 Meeting of the Texas Sections of the APS and AAPT and Zone 13 of the SPS
Volume 58, Number 3
Thursday–Saturday, April 4–6, 2013; Stephenville, Texas
Session D2: Physics Education |
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Chair: Eric Hagedorn, University of Texas at El Paso Room: Science Building 109 |
Friday, April 5, 2013 2:00PM - 2:12PM |
D2.00001: Why You Should Have LAs: A Student Perspective Jessica Conn, Eleanor Close In 2012 Texas State University's Physics Department created a Learning Assistant Program to further develop students' conceptual understanding of physics through the introductory physics sequence. Through this program, undergraduate students have the opportunity to work with fundamental physics concepts more deeply both during time spent with other LAs while preparing for the following week's lesson and while working directly with students in the classroom or the Physics Help Center. This program also provides an opportunity for physics majors who are interested in physics education research to learn about and participate in the field while still an undergraduate. I will discuss how being a Learning Assistant helped deepen my own conceptual understanding of Newtonian Mechanics and peaked my interest in physics education research, and what kinds of research I hope to engage in next school year. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, April 5, 2013 2:12PM - 2:24PM |
D2.00002: Investigative study on the correlation between high school student Mental Rotation Test (MRT) scores and state assessment scores and grades in STEM classes Alfonso Hinojosa, Ramon Lopez We are investigating the effects that student spatial representations have on student success in state assessment exams and STEM courses. Previous work indicates an increase in a student's cognitive load when mentally manipulating three-dimensional images. In physics, student difficulties with mentally manipulating 3-D images while retaining related material may be connected with spatial intelligence issues. To investigate this, we conducted a study (9 sections) on student spatial intelligence during the fall 2012 semester using the introductory physics and chemistry classes. All students were administered the MRT, which consists of 20 spatial intelligence problems. The scores were then statistically correlated with the corresponding student state assessment scores, as well as class grades. We will contrast those correlations with the correlations between student exam performance and high school courses taken. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, April 5, 2013 2:24PM - 2:36PM |
D2.00003: My Learning Assistant experience at Texas State Taylor Shimek, Eleanor Close The learning assistant (LA) program is a program designed to better help undergraduate students understand concepts in physics. This semester I am a sophomore at Texas State University-San Marcos and have been a learning assistant. With my experience in the program so far I have seen how the LA program helps students understand what is being taught in class. I have also gained a better understanding of physics though working with the program as well as how to teach physics. The pedagogy course that goes along with the program has helped me to better understand the trouble students have learning new concepts. This class also involves conducting a clinical interview to determine a person's mental model(s) on energy. I will discuss the results of this project in my talk. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, April 5, 2013 2:36PM - 2:48PM |
D2.00004: Simplifying Avogadro's Number an Activity for Teachers James Roberts, Betty Crocker One of the outstanding discoveries of the 19$^{\mathrm{th}}$ century was the observation that a volume of gas molecules confined to 22.4 liters at standard pressure and temperature had a fixed number. This number is Avogadro's number. One of the activities of the Regional Collaborative for Excellence in Science Teaching at UNT is for the teachers to understand the concept of this large number and to then use an activity with current flow through a Copper Sulfate solution to get a number that is proportional to Avogadro's number through electron counting. This activity shows how very large numbers can be arrived at by taking fractions of the whole and extrapolating to large numbers. The activity uses a known count of pennies whose mass is obtained and this fraction used to obtain the number of units (coins) that would be in a mass of Avogadro's number of coins. The coins are assumed to be proportional to atoms. Faraday's laws of electrolysis are used in the electroplating process to extract Copper ions from solution to form Copper. The mass of the Copper is obtained, the fact that it is bivalent is used to show that it takes two electrons to form Copper from the Copper ion extracted from the solution by electric current flow. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, April 5, 2013 2:48PM - 3:00PM |
D2.00005: Winter Break Effect in General Education CLASS Results David Donnelly, Hunter Close, Eleanor Close The Winter Break Effect is a shift in student attitudes toward more expert-like during the break between the first semester and second semester of a course. We have CLASS data from a two semester general education course that seems to demonstrate a Winter Break Effect. However, more detailed analysis of matched responses between the end of the first semester and the beginning of the second semester indicates that no significant shift in overall favorable percentage occurred between the first and second semester. We do however observe a statistically significant decrease in the overall unfavorable percentage. This shift persists throughout the second semester of the course. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, April 5, 2013 3:00PM - 3:12PM |
D2.00006: Conceptual Inventory and Assessment Results from a Department at Risk Beth Thacker Assessment results from a large-scale assessment of the introductory courses of a department at risk are presented. The results compared the understanding of students taught traditionally to those with Physics Education Research Informed (PER-informed) instruction in the labs and recitations only to those with PER-informed instruction in labs, recitations and lecture sessions. The results reflect those found in other studies that indicate that student-centered pedagogy is more effective at increasing students' understanding. Still, the majority of physics faculty at Texas Tech University (TTU) are hesitant to introduce student-centered pedagogy into the lecture instruction, at odds with results of studies, such as those in the Strategic Programs for Innovations in Undergraduate Physics (SPIN-UP) report that indicate that the adoption of interactive, student-centered introductory physics curricula is an important component in increasing retention. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, April 5, 2013 3:12PM - 3:24PM |
D2.00007: Student Gestures about Complex Wave Functions for One-Dimensional Potentials Catherine Schiber, Hunter Close, Eleanor Close, David Donnelly A quantum wave function for a particle in a one-dimensional potential may be purely real at some instant, or there may be no such instant, depending on the potential. When the time dependence of the wave function is factored in, any function will surely have both real and imaginary parts. The complex nature of the wave function in these cases is perhaps best shown using three dimensions rather than with a two-dimensional drawing. We asked upper-division quantum mechanics students in an oral exam to show with their hands what the shape of wave functions for various potentials would look like, and how these functions would evolve in time. We analyze the students' gestures to understand their thinking; in particular, we investigate the difference between gestures that trace static structures and those that represent dynamic evolution, and how students extend mathematical knowledge from two-dimensional contexts into three. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, April 5, 2013 3:24PM - 3:36PM |
D2.00008: Integrating computational physics problems into upper division physics curriculum Tikhon Bykov In recent years computational physics is starting to become a standard part of undergraduate physics curriculum. There are two alternative approaches on how computational physics can be taught. It can either be a standalone computational physics course or various computational physics problems can be integrated into existing upper division physics curriculum. McMurry physics department has chosen the second approach. It appears that learning computational physics methods in the context of typical physics problem enhances understanding of both numerical and programming aspects. In this talk, I will give examples of the types of computational physics problems being considered in Classical Mechanics, Thermodynamics and Electricity {\&} Magnetism courses to illustrate the main numerical methods used in physics. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, April 5, 2013 3:36PM - 3:48PM |
D2.00009: Students' dynamic geometric reasoning about quantum spin-1/2 states Hunter Close, Catherine Schiber, David Donnelly, Eleanor Close Quantum states are traditionally cognitively managed exclusively with algebra rather than geometry. One reason for emphasizing algebra is the high dimensionality of quantum mathematical systems; even spin-1/2 systems require a 2-d complex number space for describing their quantum states, which can be hard to visualize. Using ``nested phasor diagrams,'' which use nesting to increase the dimensionality of graphic space, we taught undergraduate students to represent spin-1/2 states graphically as well as algebraically. In oral exams, students were asked to identify which spin-1/2 states, expressed numerically, would generate the same set of probabilities as each other (i.e., they are the same except for a different overall phase factor). Video records of oral exams show that no students (N=13) performed this task successfully using an algebraic method; instead, all students solved the problem graphically. Furthermore, every student who succeeded used a certain gesture to solve the problem. [Preview Abstract] |
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