United States

In 1947 the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists debuted &quot;the doomsday clock&quot; icon as a symbolic representation of how close humanity was to self-annhiliation in the nuclear age. Initially set at 7 minutes to midnight it has been changed 22 times up until the present. There are multiple issues with the &quot;minutes to midnight&quot; framework that are crucial to examine: to what extent a relic of the cold war has relevance today; the ramifications of the &quot;doomsday clock&quot; being a key exemplar of the physics community as public educators across multiple generations; and the presumption that the rhetoric of catastrophism is needed to motivate non-scientists to be cognizant of serious issues raised by scientific research and technological developments. Understanding this history has been made even more urgent today as background to the decisions the scientific community makes about how to communicate with the public about the issue of climate change.

AAPT SM 21

Past/Present: Does the Doomsday Clock Keep the Right Time?

nuclear issues

doomsday clock

climate change

**Making Physics More Inclusive and Eliminating Exclusionary Practices in Physics**

As a gateway discipline to STEM majors and careers, physics plays a central role in deciding who does, and who doesn't, get to discover and pursue scientific careers. Technical and scientific professionals are rewarded with economic privilege and status which affords them both social and cultural power. Therefore, social justice will be realized only when the opportunity, and the choice, to excel in physics is open to all students. The culture and practices of the physics classroom reflect the culture of physics at large, which raises the question of how our professional physics communities can embrace, rather than inadvertently repel, a diverse group of academics that can help improve physics culture.  To this end, the 2021 Physics Education Research Conference will focus on defining inclusive spaces and practices. Additionally, we will explore strategies for eliminating exclusionary practices in our classrooms, research spaces, and professional organizations. We call on the community to propose sessions that will drive conversations related to these initiatives throughout PERC 2021.

Please download the full program [here. ](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TRMC_SYJ3PUqXyP7sskA7LRSA8ow0eRE/view?usp=sharing)

PERC SM 21

August 4, 2021 - August 5, 2021 in a Virtual Conference Format

Making Physics More Inclusive and Eliminating Exclusionary Practices in Physics

In 1947 the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists debuted "the doomsday clock" icon as a symbolic representation of how close humanity was to self-annhiliation in the nuclear age. Initially set at 7 minutes to midnight it has been changed 22 times up until the present. There are multiple issues with the "minutes to midnight" framework that are crucial to examine: to what extent a relic of the cold war has relevance today; the ramifications of the "doomsday clock" being a key exemplar of the physics community as public educators across multiple generations; and the presumption that the rhetoric of catastrophism is needed to motivate non-scientists to be cognizant of serious issues raised by scientific research and technological developments. Understanding this history has been made even more urgent today as background to the decisions the scientific community makes about how to communicate with the public about the issue of climate change.

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.

Please log in with your AAPT account or register for the event if you haven't already.

If you are registered please note that you need to be logged in with your AAPT email / credentials in order to get access.

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.

Energy Transformations with Utah FORGE: Keys to Sustainable Energy Solutions

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.

Mass Extinction Caused by Gravitational Instability inside the Earth

During the Battle of Britain in 1940, the British sent a top secret mission under the leadership of Henry Tizard to the United States carrying what was later described by historian John Phinney Baxter III as “the most valuable cargo ever brought to our shores.” The cargo was a suitcase full of scientific and technological secrets and one working cavity magnetron, which helped seal the alliance between Britain and the United States, spurred wartime technical breakthroughs, and greatly helped to win the war. In this talk, we will examine some of the key secrets shared by the Tizard mission, including the Whittle jet engine, a system for radar defense, and a proposal on the feasibility of nuclear weapons. We will also explore the historical ramifications of this astounding sharing of secrets across borders spurred by the dire exigencies of war, and draw lessons for the COVID-19 pandemic and future crises.

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