Blue Ridge PBS, in partnership with Virtual Virginia and the Demonstration Lab at Virginia Tech, has produced a series of high school Physics demonstrations recorded on campus, hosted by Ph.D.candidate Alison Gaylord. These short, SOL correlated episodes are available at no cost and are also embedded in the Virtual Virginia Physics courses. The focus of the discussion will be how to use these...
The Virginia Department of Aviation has three main functions: Support Virginia's public use airports, fly the Commonwealth's aircraft, and to inspire and educate our residents into the aviation industry.
This presentation will discuss the educational programs of the DOAV including, grants, scholarships, and contests.
Question and answer session to follow.
Collaborative learning has proven to be an effective pedagogical approach that is gaining broad acceptance across STEM disciplines. While classroom activities are often the focus for such collaborative work, assessments have primarily remained the province of individual effort. For summative assessment, this is entirely appropriate, but for formative assessment, it is reasonable to “bend the...
The speaker is passionate about undergraduate teaching and research and he believes in the holistic development of students by integrating teaching and research at the undergraduate level. He has developed hundreds of cartoon clicker questions to provoke vigorous group discussions on critical thinking questions in classrooms, created corresponding hands-on active learning labs to further...
We revisit the ancient problem of finding the optimal angle for launching a projectile so as to maximize the range. In the last meeting, we showed a solution to this problem using only geometry. Here, we present some novel perspectives. One is the notion of "duality" (between the launch and target sites). Another is the envelope of all trajectories (for launching at different angles, but with...
Since he was young, Prof. Johnson has loved both science and Star Wars. As an adult, he wrote a book that tries to explain different theories as to how scenes and devices in the Star Wars universe work.
Have you ever wondered how the Death Star works? How shields can stop catapults, but droids can walk right through? This talk will offer possible explanations of these scenes and...
I often find the students in my intro physics classes have trouble with the math even though they’ve done well in all the pre-req math classes. It turns out using math in science isn’t the same as in a math class. I analyze what’s going on and make suggestions for helping them to deal with the differences.
This seminar will be interactive. If you have a smartphone, tablet, or laptop with...
Panel discussion by high school teachers and administrators.
The story of the development of atomic physics is interdisciplinary, compelling, and deeply human. Therefore, this content is fitting for liberal arts undergraduate courses or for high school courses, providing not only a rich scientific experience, but also an engaging framework for investigating the nature of science and its role in society. I will describe an introductory undergraduate...
Physics is a science that can be difficult for students to understand. It involves a lot of abstract thinking. It can be difficult for students to conceptualize the concepts learned. Our studies show that simulations-based lessons have the potential to engage students in deep learning that empowers their understanding as opposed to traditional learning which requires mostly memorization. In...
Last year, the Department of Physics at William & Mary launched a new professional mentoring program for female undergraduates in physics, Mentoring for Careers in Physics (MCP). Initiated by Ran Yang, the co-founder and co-director of MCP, our program pairs undergraduate physicists (or anyone considering a physics major) with female professionals working in STEM fields beyond academia. MCP...
It is important to bring 21st century physics into the classroom. A recent experiment by the Regal lab prepared the first three energy eigenstates of a harmonic oscillator and then used time-of-flight spectroscopy to measure the momentum distribution (which can be easily converted into the momentum-space wavefunction). In this talk, I will explain how this experiment works and how you can...
Due to the advent of Quantum Computing Technologies, there has been a rush to reinvent the teaching of quantum mechanics in order to better train the future work force for that field. At the past few CSAAPT Meetings, we heard many talks on newly developed methods to teach the essence of quantum mechanics to high school students. But what about the other pillar of modern physics, namely...
- Introduction
Direct learning approach commonly used by Physics teachers does not really improve student ability to develop self-understanding as well as environment awareness [1]. In direct learning, especially used to teach Physics at senior High School, teachers give an explanation about the material, followed by examples of exercises, and end with students working on exercises....
After two years of remote learning, labs, and testing, we are finally able to bring students back to campus, albeit for a limited time while I kept all the remote testing in place. In a sense, I decided to “parallel-test” students - keep the online, timed, brief, low-stake tests against the in-person, longer, higher-stake, traditional show-work tests of the pre-pandemic years. The preliminary...
Traditional undergraduate laboratory courses are typically designed to reinforce and verify lecture content and use highly structured experiments to achieve this goal. In recent years, there have been numerous national calls to examine and enhance the student experience in these lab courses. AAPT and APS have recommended that undergraduate lab curricula should develop students’ critical...
Office hours, a time and place where students receive professor guidance, is an asset available to nearly every college and university student; however, many students do not use office hours. Office hours can be extremely beneficial, so the question exists, how to get students who need help to come to office hours? Herd Hours, an alternative to office hours, successfully addresses this...
You might be surprised (and perhaps a little dismayed) to learn how few of your students have actually built things with their own hands. Physics teachers have a unique opportunity to allow students to build their own lab devices. In doing this, I have found that students usually take ownership of their learning and better understand how things work. In this workshop, I will describe...
In this activity, students learn about addition of vectors and relative motion in two dimensions by simulating real flight conditions on an obsolete Flight Navigation Chart. These charts, called “Sectional Charts”, are used by pilots to identify landmarks. Students act as “pilots” as they take their airplane from the origin airport to her destination airport, first passively (without...
Summer workshops spearheaded by the Department of Physics in collaboration with the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia and with Jefferson Laboratory in Newport News developed activities for secondary physics and physical science teachers to use in their classrooms. Specifically, energy, electricity, magnetism, light and optics were the subject areas. In this presentation...
