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Sensors equipped with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) can stream data into web apps running in the Google Chrome browser. This allows students or instructors to collect data into a web-based electronic lab notebook and immediately collaborate, analyze, and provide feedback. Additionally, this means one web-based platform can provide lab instructions, data collection and analysis, lab report submission, and grading. This greatly expands the ways instructors and students can use data collected from sensors in all teaching environments. Pivot Interactives is one platform that enables this, with a growing list of compatible BLE sensors.

AAPT SM 21

Integrating Bluetooth Sensors into an Web-based Lab Notebook (Pivot Interactives)

Join us in exploring emergent themes in PER as a scholarly endeavor and as a research community!  Since its inception, PER has served as a confluence of discipline, theory, research methodology, practice, and application.  How have these facets and the interplays among them been fruitful for physics education globally, regionally, locally, or otherwise?  And, how have our successes and interactions influenced the very nature of PER itself?
Following the lead of AAPT for the summer meeting, PERC 20/20 was virtual. Enjoy browsing the content.

PERC SM 20

Since its inception, PER has served as a confluence of discipline, theory, research methodology, practice, and application.  How have these facets and the interplays among them been fruitful for physics education globally, regionally, locally, or otherwise?  And, how have our successes and interactions influenced the very nature of PER itself?

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I will describe a first attempt to build computation into the undergraduate quantum mechanics course at High Point University. In a spin first approach, students uncover the postulates of quantum mechanics entirely in the context of spin-1/2 degrees of freedom before developing position-space wave function technology needed to study the standard array of potential wells. This non-standard approach to teaching quantum mechanics is particularly well suited for the integration of computation. In addition to presenting several examples of how integrated computational exercises can aid in student understanding of key ideas in quantum mechanics, I will share some possible independent projects involving advanced topics which are accessible to students well versed in the basic computational methods used to investigate spin.

Integrating Computation into a Spin First Undergraduate Quantum Mechanics Course

This presentation will provide an overview of presentations that are available to those attending for use with their classes. The presentations are designed for students in grades 6-8, 9 – 12, and college introductory physics courses. Climate science challenges are presented in terms of thermodynamics/entropy changes that occur due to procuring and burning fossil fuels to produce electricity. Information about the Climate Reality Project will also be included.

A Thermodynamics Approach to Introducing the Climate Crisis

In this work, a numerical development for the supercontinuum (SC) generation is demonstrated by developing a fractional calculus model for a photonic crystal fibre of hexagonal design. The solutions are presented in the temporal and spectral way of the Nonlinear Schrödinger Equation (NLSE). The results show that, for a spectral development of the NLSE, great computational savings are obtained and the analysis of the phenomena that intervene in the generation of this non-linear effect is feasible.

Fractional Calculus Approach in Supercontinuum Generation in Photonic Crystal Fibers

This session shares three different approaches to make physics problem solving practice more group-worthy: Murder Mysteries, Escape Rooms, and Scrambles. All activities introduced are available to download and modify for free.

Group-Worthy Physics Challenges

The design goal of the IOLab was to create a high-quality data acquisition tool to bring physics experiments out of the formal laboratory space and into students’ daily lives. The Covid-19 pandemic has been a bittersweet outside factor to advancing this goal: Tens of thousands of students are now using IOLabs in their homes for remote introductory laboratory classes. The features of the system – particularly those that make it work for remote instruction - were developed over several years of coordination between software design, curriculum design, and assessment. The introductory laboratory classes that subsequently emerged at the University of Illinois use the IOLab as a bridge between informal investigation and formal experimentation. In this talk I will discuss how we used the IOLab’s features to blend remote and classroom learning in a hybrid instruction style pre-pandemic, and how this coordination has translated to fully-remote instruction.

Working together, apart, with IOLabs in remote introductory physics laboratories

Virtual reality (VR) technology continues to mature at a rapid clip, creating potential for its use as a means of administering "hands-on" physics lab curriculum in hybrid or remote learning contexts. This talk draws from experiences administering VR-enabled labs to classes of 120 students in a hybrid model and 37 students in a remote model to inform answers to key questions around use of VR in remote labs: What advantages does VR offer over traditional "flat" simulations? Do students recognize "hands-on" work done in an immersive 3D environment as being "real" science? How is collaboration between distant students affected by use of VR? What is the current and near-future feasibility of VR technology use in remote instruction? We argue that VR labs have a niche in the remote physics lab instructor's toolbox, and outline current and anticipated applications of VR to remote physics lab instruction.

Virtual Reality Enabling Remote Collaborative Physics Labs

In physics and STEM we tend to teach in the same way across courses. The students watch the instructor solve problems, memorize the process, and regurgitate it later - all while under serious pressure to get good grades. This process can deter students from STEM, encourage cheating, and prevent deeper understanding. I wanted to find out what could contribute to a more enriched learning experience in STEM using feedback from students and teachers. By conducting surveys of students about their experiences with classes, teachers, and online tools I set out to gain a better understanding of what makes an effective and enjoyable STEM education. I will summarize survey results and go over methods to potentially improve the learning experience such as incorporating project-based assessments, offering exam revisions, implementing self-grading, and encouraging collaboration. 


The Student Experience - How to Enrich STEM Education

Scientific researchers across all disciplines are routinely faced with ethical dilemmas in their work. To help strengthen researcher’s knowledge in their ethical reasoning skills, there are required and optional trainings that faculty have to go through every year. The main goal of this study is to investigate how research professors think about ethical issues in their own work. We argue that these programs will be more effective if we can better align them with how scientists think about these dilemmas. In this study, we interviewed fourteen scientists from several disciplines about how they viewed ethics in their research and presented several different case studies specifically designed to include several ethical concerns. We analyze these interviews by focusing on the goals and values they express in their ethical reasoning. This work will inform us on how scientists invoke values in their ethical arguments.

Roles of goals and values in ethical discussions

Scientists are often encouraged to engage in some form of ethical training. With cases of scientific misconduct being reported, we are looking for ways to improve these training sessions. In this study we investigatehow scientists engage in Epistemic Games, and if identifying these games can provide some insight into how scientists engage in ethical discussions. This was done through the lens of a fellowship we formed of fifteen faculty at one university. This fellowship met for numerous sessions in the span of a year to discuss topics in the sciences including reproducibility and integrity in data. These sessions were transcribed and organized into Epistemic Games using three characteristics: the target epistemic form, the entry and exit conditions, and the moves made by the participants. Using these games, we can begin to understand the different factors that influence a group discussion towards a particular goal. With this knowledge, we can then begin to understand if there are situations that prompt someone to invoke more ethical values, and whether this knowledge can be used to improve ethical training.

Investigating How Scientists Engage in Ethical Discussions

As current physics students, we are curious about how intertwined the military-industrial complex is with our potential futures. This question motivated our independent research study at Texas State University. We explored the intersections of ethics, academic physics, and the structure of the military-industrial complex in the United States. In this talk, we describe our motivations to participate in this research and our particular areas of interest. These include the geopolitical context surrounding emerging warfare technologies, current crossover technologies, and the interactions of stakeholders within our contemporary funding landscape. We will reflect on what we’ve learned and share our own personal takeaways from the project.
(This talk is co-presented by both Ciana Pike and Jordan Knight.)

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Integrating Computation into a Spin First Undergraduate Quantum Mechanics Course

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