American Association of Physics Teachers
Chesapeake Section

The local contact person for the Spring 1999 Section Meeting at the University of Delaware is:

George Watson Dept. of Physics & Astronomy University of Delaware Newark, DE 19716

E-mail: ghw@udel.edu       Phone: (302) 831-6677       FAX (302) 831-1637

Workshops for the Spring 1999 Meeting

Friday May 21, 1999

3:00 to 5:00 p.m.

208 Gore Hall
Science Education Reform: Force and Motion from Elementary School through College
Barbara J. Duch, Math and Science Education Resource Center, University of Delaware, bduch@udel.edu, and Mary Ann Wells, Christiana H.S., Christina School District, Delaware, mawells@udel.edu

Throughout this nation, science education reform is impacting classrooms from kindergarten to college. Unfortunately, many teachers are unaware of changes being made in how students are taught, what they are learning, and what impact this should make on their own teaching. The state of Delaware recently adapted grade-level performance indicators for student accountability in science. In this workshop, participants will see and experience what students in Delaware's schools are learning about force and motion, and how the University of Delaware is using problem-based learning to teach those topics to college students.

3:00 to 4:30 p.m.

122 Sharp Lab
Physics Education Research and Instruction in Modern Physics/Quantum Mechanics*
R. N. Steinberg, M. S. Sabella, and E. F. Redish, Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, rstein@physics.umd.edu

The Physics Education Research Group at the University of Maryland has been conducting systematic investigations into student understanding of topics in modern physics and elementary quantum mechanics. We use this research as a guide to curriculum development and instruction. Our target audience is primarily sophomore and junior level engineering students at the University of Maryland, but the research results and curriculum are relevant to all classes that cover topics in modern physics or quantum mechanics. In this workshop we will describe the research and work through sample materials.
* sponsored in part by NSF grant DUE9652877 and Department of Education FIPSE grant 116B70186.

4:30 to 6:00 p.m.

Basement of McKinly Hall
Long-Term, Student Designed "Big Projects" in a Physical Science Course for Non-majors
Harry L. Shipman, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware, harrys@udel.edu

For the past four years, students in a large, 480-student physical science course at the University of Delaware have designed, conducted, and completed long-term laboratory investigations. Student groups have built devices that have carried eggs off of 15-story buildings and learned some physics (and engineering) in the process. They have investigated the effects of preservatives. Many groups have invented their own problems to investigate. The results of their investigations are presented to the University community in a campus-wide poster session jointly with a biology course, also for non-majors. A variety of evaluations indicate that these Big Projects are effective. I will share the experience, the evaluations, and samples of student work.
SCEN102: Physical Science and Technology

Please send reservation requests for the banquet to George Watson no later than Friday, May 14, 1999. The cost will be $20.00 per person.

6:30 p.m.
Trabant University Center

The meal will be served at about 7:00 p.m. and Dr. Phillip's presentation should begin about 8:00 p.m.

Almost Absolute Zero: The Story of Laser Cooling and Trapping
William D. Phillips, Director of the Laser Cooling and Trapping Group, NIST, and 1997 Nobel Laureate

Contrary to intuition, we can cool down a gas by shining a laser on it. This lecture will describe how laser cooling works, and why it works better than anyone had expected it to. We can now cool a gas of atoms to less than a millionth of a degree above absolute zero--the coldest temperatures in the universe. Atoms this cold exhibit weird and wonderful properties and are being used for applications ranging from super-accurate atomic clocks to atom lasers.

The lecture is based on the Nobel Lecture given in Stockholm on 8 December 1997. It is aimed at a general audience, but discusses some of the newest and most exciting developments in physics.  

Papers for the Spring 1999 Meeting

Saturday May 22, 1999

8:00 a.m.   Coffee, juice and pastries
8:30 a.m.   Session begins. All papers will be in Sharp Lab 130.     (photo)

Contributed papers will be presented in sequence -- there are no parallel sessions. Each speaker will be given 20 minutes to present with 5 minutes for questions. There will be a coffee break at about 10:00 a.m.; the lunch break will start at about 11:30 a.m. The afternoon session will start promptly at 1:00 p.m. with the remaining contributed papers. The meeting will conclude with the annual business meeting.

An Exercise in Understanding Constellations
Duane H. Pontius, Jr., Bartol Research Institute, Univ. of Delaware, pontius@bartol.udel.edu

Most students are vaguely aware that many stars are grouped together in constellations, but the practical and physical foundations of those groupings may not be appreciated. In this talk, I will demonstrate a brief group exercise designed to illustrate the role of human cognition and creativity in the origin of stellar constellations.     (photo 1 -- photo 2 -- photo 3)

This is Not Your Father's Physics Course - A Look at the Revised Introductory Course at Randolph-Macon
George Spagna, Department of Physics, Randolph-Macon College, gspagna@rmc.edu
PowerPoint presentation     (photo 1 -- photo 2)

Doppler Curves for Cruising Airplanes
William H. Ingham, Physics Department, James Madison University, inghamwh@jmu.edu

Most physics teachers and students have at least on occasion watched and listened to the passage of a cruising airplane. A discussion will be given of how an airplane's altitude, speed, and sound output determine what is heard by a ground-based observer.     (photo)

~10:00 a.m.   15 minute Coffee Break.     (photo -- photo)

Electrical Engineering in the Physics Laboratory: ABETter way?
George Watson, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware, ghw@udel.edu

ABET2000 and revisions in the engineering curriculum provide opportunities for development of new course offerings in physics departments. At the University of Delaware, an introductory course in electricity and electronics has been designed that replaces the traditional course in electromagnetism for mechanical engineering majors. I will review some of the reasons why this course is better offered in the physics department rather than the electrical engineering department. Emphasis on conceptual understanding in a quantitative framework and introduction of problem-based learning and design exercises in the laboratory will be highlighted.
PowerPoint presentation
PHYS345: Electricity and Electronics for Engineers

A Survey of Current Trends in Materials Science Instruction with Applications to Physics and Chemistry
Wm. Christopher Hughes, Department of Physics, James Madison University, hugheswc@jmu.edu

Much as the physics community has done in the last few decades, the materials science academic community has begun to look more seriously at innovations in the way they teach their subject. This is of interest to those of us in the more traditional science disciplines because many of the elements of materials science make excellent gateways to physics and chemistry. The talk will review some of the more significant recent efforts at curricular innovation and instructional tools with a review of those that impact secondary and undergraduate physics. Personal perspectives on the incorporation of materials science into an undergraduate physics program in absence of any engineering programs will be included.     (photo)

~11:30 a.m.   Lunch break.

1:00 p.m.   Presentations resume.     (photo 1 -- photo 1)

A High School Curriculum Designed to Help Students Learn How to Learn
Andrew Elby, Thomas Jefferson H.S. for Science & Technology, and Physics Education Research Group, University of Maryland, College Park, elby@physics.umd.edu

Just as students come to class with intuitive preconceptions about the physical world, they also come with "preconceptions" about physics knowledge and learning. For instance, as Hammer (Physics Teacher, 1989) shows, some students view physics as weakly-connected "pieces" of knowledge, while others view physics knowledge as richly interconnected. Some students think knowing physics *is* knowing formulas, while others think concepts are the primary locus of understanding. This helps to explain why many students focus too heavily on memorizing equations and problem-solving algorithms; they don't understand what it means to "understand."

Previous research indicates that college students' beliefs about knowledge and learning affect their study habits, and hence, their academic performance. For this reason, a high school curriculum that helps students develop more sophisticated beliefs about knowledge and learning might lead to greater success in college. Unfortunately, as Steinberg (Am. J. Phys, 1998) shows, reform curricula that greatly improve students' conceptual understanding of physics do not necessarily engender more productive beliefs about learning and understanding. For this reason, I decided to teach a high-school physics course specifically designed to help students learn how to learn.

This paper presents the results of my year-long curricular experiment. First, I'll discuss data showing that my students did indeed develop more productive beliefs about physics knowledge and learning. Then, I'll discuss some elements of my curriculum, including the agonizing trade-offs. I'll provide sample labs, homework questions, etc., that may have helped my students learn about learning.     (photo 1 -- photo 2)
PowerPoint presentation

Electric Circuits: Performance Assessment in a Large Physical Science Course
Harry Shipman, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Univ. of Delaware, harrys@udel.edu and
Barbara J. Duch, Math and Science Education Resource Center, University of Delaware, bduch@udel.edu

At the pre-college level, broadening the kind of assessment of scientific knowledge to include asking students to conduct experiments and evaluating their procedures -- performance assessment -- has become an increasingly important way of assessing student performance in courses. However, college teachers, especially of introductory courses, have a large number of students and an ever-changing collection of TAs, and the prevailing mode of assessment is that which is easiest: written tests, often given in the multiple choice mode. This talk will describe a two week teaching sequence on electrical circuits which permitted students to do a form of performance assessment during the second week. Groups were given a task to do and graded on their success. It was successfully implemented in a very large course with 21 lab sections and 480 students in the spring of 1999.     (photo)
This teaching innovation was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trust.
SCEN102: Physical Science and Technology

Optics Experiments with Light-Emitting Diodes
James O'Connell, Department of Science, Frederick Community College, JSOConnell@aol.com

Semiconductor diodes emitting light in the visible and infrared regions are found in laser pointers and in TV remote-control units. These devices can be used in a variety of introductory physics lecture demonstrations and student experiments. Nine simple optical measurements will be described using an inexpensive red-beam laser pointer. The decoding of a TV remote-control signal will be demonstrated using a silicon solar cell as a detector of the infrared-pulse string.     (photo 1 -- photo 2)

A Role-Playing Game for Teaching Science Process
Maurice V. Barnhill III, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Univ. of Delaware, mvb@udel.edu

A course has been given which teaches the process by which the scientific community comes to general agreement about which explanations are the most useful and most nearly correct. The course uses a role-playing game in which students investigate elementary-particle spectroscopy by "publishing" papers on the patterns they see in disguised particle data. Anecdotal evidence is quoted that many students in this course do get a good feel of the competition and personal rewards involved in scientific investigations. Students are also able to find the patterns in the data with rather small input from the instructor.     (photo)
Notes from the transparencies
PHYS146: Quarks, Gluons, and the Big Bang

A business meeting will follow the contributed papers.
Please plan to attend.     (photo 1 -- photo 2 -- photo 3)
Awarding of the best paper prizes.

"http://www.physics.udel.edu/csaapt/Spring1999/program.html"
Last updated June 1, 1999.