United States

AAPT SM 20

How data guided pedagogical changes can help traditionally under-served populations

under-served populations; introductory physics ; institutional data

The 2020 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting brought together physics educators from around the globe to learn about the latest in physics theory, research methodology and education from leaders in their field. The program featured plenary speakers, sessions, workshops and many special activities.

For more information please visit the 2020 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting page at: https://www.aapt.org/Conferences/SM2020/index.cfm.


The 2020 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting brought together physics educators from around the globe to learn about the latest in physics theory, research methodology and education from leaders in their field. 

technical paper

Doing Flight Physics with Smartphones and Real-time Data Analysis

QuarkNet High School students and teachers have collected data on cosmic ray muons. Their data is available to all on the i2u2.org site. QuarkNet has made available several experimental analysis tools to use with the existing 100K data files. In a remote learning environment, students can design their own experiment to measure fundamental properties like the speed or lifetime of muons, changes in the cosmic ray rate over time or with angle of orientation, or investigate the size of cosmic ray air showers.

QuarkNet Supports Remote Analyses of Cosmic Rays for High Schools

Despite limiting access to applicants from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, the practice of using hard or soft GRE cutoff scores in physics graduate program admissions is still a popular method for reducing the pool of applicants. The present study considers whether the undergraduate institutions of applicants have any influence on the admissions process by modelling a physics GRE cutoff score with application data from admissions offices of five Midwestern universities. Two distinct approaches based on inferential and predictive modelling are conducted. While there is some disagreement regarding the relative importance between features, the two approaches largely agree that to include institutional information significantly aids the analysis. Both models identify cases where the institutional effects are comparable to factors of known importance such as gender and undergraduate GPA. As the results are stable across many cutoff scores, we advocate against the practice of employing physics GRE cutoff scores in admissions.

How do undergraduate institutions matter for physics GRE cutoff scores?

During the Spring 2020 quarter, the COVID-19 pandemic precluded access to our acoustics laboratory. In response, I redeveloped the experiments of our acoustics lab course in several ways. For some introductory activities, I employed videos to show basic concepts and methods in place of lab demonstrations and used applets to maintain some student interactivity. However, for most of the specialized experiments, I was able to draw upon past student work archived in electronic laboratory notebooks to extract photos, setup details, and experimental data sets. I then used that information to write activities that described the experimental methods, but required the current students to visualize, analyze, and interpret the data. To facilitate the course remotely, I used electronic laboratory notebooks to deliver and receive content. Preliminary indications are that the students are obtaining a similar understanding of the experimental methods and possibly better understanding of the data analysis than previous students.

Teaching an Advanced Acoustics Laboratory Course without a Laboratory

Lawrence’s Advanced Laboratory course trains students in experimental physics. Using research equipment, students engage deeply with real physics while learning scientific communication. Students worked on three self-selected projects using analog and digital electronics, ranging from single photon detectors to chaotic dynamics. Each student created an extension to one project, consisting of design and prototyping as well as collection and analysis of data. One student built an analog electronics neuron, firing upon exposure to a trumpet played at 392 Hz. Students shared project results with their scientific community via a scientific symposium (after students attended the APS Virtual April Meeting), an issue of Advanced Laboratory Letters at Lawrence (after PRL-based journal club discussions), and video demonstrations. Join us for a discussion of our approaches to evaluation and feedback, inclusive strategies, and course (and Zoom-related) fatigue. We will present what worked, what fell flat, and what surprised us along the way.

Advanced Laboratory at Home: From Single Photons to Chaos

Introducing SU(3) color charge in undergraduate quantum mechanics

Preliminary Results on Students in Dispersed Remote Telescope Observing Teams

Each year, International Masterclasses (IMC) bring authentic particle physics data analysis to high school students and teachers. We had just started for 2020 when the pandemic came. By mid-March all IMC videoconferences were canceled, thus ending masterclasses for thousands worldwide. A group in QuarkNet responded by building and facilitating a masterclass to be done on a large scale with a core analysis that students could perform remotely with coaching by their teachers and online support from staff. We called it the Big Analysis of Muons in CMS (BAMC). Two rounds of BAMC were accomplished: one in April with students of mostly QuarkNet teachers and an international round in May. Between them, an estimated 700 students participated from around the world.

QuarkNet creates a big online physics event (twice)

QuarkNet is an NSF-funded professional development (PD) program that provides science teachers the means to develop their skills to bring authentic research and data analysis into the classroom. We will discuss some of our challenges and opportunities in leading PD during this time of remote learning, the technologies we are using, and some best practices in leading PD remotely.

Leading Effective Professional Development Using Zoom

Goes like thinking refers to the way that physics experts quickly relate the behavior of one changing quantity to that of another, e.g., "the electric field goes like one over R squared.'" This statement is deeply meaningful and intuitive to experts, who understand why other quantities such as charge are omitted; however, it is not clear that students interpret this phrase the same way. One application of "goes like" reasoning is data linearization---choosing quantities to use for the independent and dependent axes to produce a linear graph whose slope has meaning. Preliminary work suggests that students may not understand the value and meaning of data linearization. We aim to describe our attempts to design and assess online lab curriculum in an introductory physics course addressing data linearization, and discuss some of the ways students make sense of their data analysis using "goes like" reasoning.

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Next from AAPT SM 20

Doing Flight Physics with Smartphones and Real-time Data Analysis

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A new advanced lab textbook, with support for remote instruction

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