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The Rayleigh-Taylor instability involving accelerated fluid layers with differing densities is well known in fluid physics. A similar instability can arise within the silicate mantles of terrestrial planets because they are typically hot in their interiors and cold at their top boundaries. The strength of the instability is enhanced by the fact that the strength of silicate minerals is a strong function of shear stress and temperature. The instability is expressed by portions of the upper and lower boundary layers detaching to form plume-like diapirs that move through the mantle to the opposite boundary. This talk will present both illustrative numerical examples and observational evidence that it has occurred in the Earth’s past and is responsible for a major mass extinction. The Magellan mission to Venus in the early 1990’s documented that a catastrophic episode of mantle instability had also occurred within Venus in the relatively recent past.

AAPT SM 21

Mass Extinction Caused by Gravitational Instability inside the Earth

catastrophic plate tectonics

mass extinction

runaway mantle instability

technical paper

Join AAPT and Physics Educators worldwide in developing and strengthening your professional connections by attending the 2021 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting. AAPT meetings are a great way to reflect on your teaching, recommit to best practices and re-energize your career with new research, products, and techniques.

Listen to internationally known plenary speakers, attend sessions, workshops, and special activities. Attending the virtual summer meeting is an excellent opportunity to share your expertise and learn from and network with leaders in the field.

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STEPP (Scaffolded Training Environment for Physics Programming) is a no-cost interactive instructional tool designed to support the teaching of kinematics and Newton’s Laws of Motion in high school physics. Developed through NSF’s STEM+C program, STEPP focuses on the overlap between physics and computational thinking. STEPP allows users to model and visualize the motion described in physics problems already in their curriculum without any formal programming experience expected or required. Carefully designed with scaffolded levels and dynamic display of motion and graphing, STEPP will be available for use in classrooms this fall at stepp.utdallas.edu. Join us to learn about STEPP and how to access resources including a video workshop introduction.

Introducing STEPP: A Resource for Physics Classrooms Utilizing Computational Thinking

Scaffolded Training Environment for Physics Programming (STEPP) project team has developed a synergistic learning environment for high school physics students to acquire physics concepts and computational thinking (CT) through formative experiences modeling and simulating kinematics using modeling tools based on state diagrams called Finite State Machines (FSMs). Scaffolding and dynamic modeling with FSMs allow students to focus on the aspects of CT that support physics learning, e.g., problem decomposition, abstraction, and algorithms, instead of the aspects that are mainly about programming. Three STEPP learning modules have been developed on 1D/2D kinematics and the Newton’s Laws of Motion using Unity game engine that is free for academic use and widely used in K-16 education and educational research. Each level of each module is designed for students to model a kinematic problem as an FSM and see the simulation result as an animation, graphs, numbers and equations which are all synchronically displayed.

Introducing Finite State Machine based modeling into high school physics

High school physics classrooms across the United States are making efforts to integrate computation into their approach to teaching physics. There is wide agreement on the importance of teaching computational thinking (CT) practices in these types of settings, but little research has focused on the dispositions that students can develop that support the development of CT practices. This presentation examines the case of one high school physics class where students do computation-integrated physics in a group work format. Drawing from a newly theorized framework on CT dispositions and the well-established theory of mindset, we investigate how students take up dispositions and mindset during class, and we examine connections between these theories and how they manifest in our data. We intend to help researchers and practitioners identify students' dispositions so that they can provide opportunities for their students to better develop dispositions and more productively engage with computationally integrated physics.

Dispositions and Mindset in Computation-integrated Physics

Integration of computation and modeling into the physics curriculum has been a defining trend at college level, and increasingly so at high school level. Computation not only enhances active learning and student engagement, it also prepares students with valuable computational thinking and skill sets to be successful in the STEM workforce. Unlike introductory physics where there is broad consensus in the subject matter and level of preparation, there is little such consensus on computation and modeling. In this presentation we will discuss integration of computation into the physics curriculum at UMass Dartmouth (see some examples at https://jwang.sites.umassd.edu/). We hope to stimulate conversations on shared experiences and common ground in computation including goals and preparations between high school and college levels.


Vertical integration of computation into the physics curriculum

(Please upload this from my earlier submission)

The STEMcoding Object Tracker

Computational Thinking (CT) has recently become an important practice to study due to its inclusion in the NGSS framework. In response to calls for further investigation into CT, we developed a framework of CT practices specific to the context of computationally integrated introductory physics classrooms. The development of the framework was guided by a comprehensive literature review of existing research around CT and an emergent coding of in-class data. This blending of literature and observations resulted in a robust six-category, fourteen-practice framework of CT practices. The application of previous literature to our specific context highlighted the substantial influence that context can have on how CT practices manifest. The framework was applied to two different classrooms to examine differences between the CT practices that occurred between groups and activities within a classroom. We also demonstrate the ability for this framework to answer multiple questions around curriculum design that involves computational integration. This work was support by the National Science Foundation (DRL-1741575).

Developing and Applying a Computational Thinking Framework in Introductory Physics

Computational methods have proliferated as part of introductory physics classes at the university level. The Integrating Computational Science Across Michigan (ICSAM) program run by Michigan State University is targeted at bringing those computational practices to secondary science classrooms. 

The initial implementation focused on students enrolled in AP Physics 1 (mostly 12th grade students) building computational models using the mathematical physics models developed from experiments.

Lessons learned from the experience in AP Physics 1 were then applied to 9th grade students when the school adopted a “Physics First” curriculum and made physics a required class. There was a concern that mathematics skills of the 9th grade students would make implementation of computation physics especially challenging. In practice, we have found that the younger students were able to create computational models almost as well as the older students.

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (DRL-1741575).

Computational Science with 9th Grade Physics Students

The Paradigms @ OSU team developed a representation for complex numbers where students use their arms to embody an Argand diagram. By grouping students, the Arms Representation can be expanded to represent complex-valued vectors. The Arms Activity Sequence utilizes this expanded form to enable groups of students to represent quantum mechanical state vectors. In this talk we will present the Arms Representation and the Arms Activity Sequence. We will discuss how the sequence supports a spins-first approach by starting with complex numbers, advancing through two- and three-state systems, considering time-dependence, and eventually extending to approximate wavefunctions. The Arms Representation exemplifies the complex nature and geometric definition of a quantum state. We will highlight the development of these and other mathematics and physics concepts in the sequence and provide pedagogical tips for its implementation.

Using Arms to Represent Complex-Valued Vectors in Quantum Mechanics

Efforts to increase diversity and inclusion in the learner population accessible to PER studies compel us to study student populations at all types of institutions. Having extensive experience at a two-year college, and a teaching gig at an elite liberal arts institution, I will present my observations of students’ similarities and differences in these two classrooms. My aim is to continue conversations on ways in which we can broaden the impact of PER findings by incorporating observations from a wider population of students.


Comparing and Contrasting College Students At Different Institutions

Utah FORGE is an international field laboratory that is managed by the Energy & Geoscience Institute, University of Utah, and sponsored by the Department of Energy, with the aim of establishing rigorous, reproducible solutions that make geothermal energy production possible anywhere beneath the surface of earth. In collaboration with the College of Education, I have been working with Utah FORGE to create NGSS aligned lessons that are relevant to this mission. In this presentation I will share a lesson on Engineering Energy Transformations that will include explorations in energy transformations in order to engage students in developing sustainable energy solutions.

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Mass Extinction Caused by Gravitational Instability inside the Earth

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Introducing STEPP: A Resource for Physics Classrooms Utilizing Computational Thinking