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In California and other western states, discussions about climate change and water access have become increasingly urgent. Connecting science learning inside the classroom to real issues that affect our students and their families is key to help students see science as a tool to work for change in their communities. Place-based education, which is rooted in historic and Indigenous educational practices, strongly supports these goals. In our Physical Science course for ninth and tenth graders, we added an outdoor experiential component to our “Science of Water” unit thereby placing our learning about water into our local context of rural Northern California. From the chemical properties of water, power generation via our local hydroelectric dam, decisions about water usage and the effects on ecosystems, and the implications of climate change, students can see the connections between all of these topics rather than learning each in isolation in separate courses.

AAPT SM 22

Place-based education in high school physical science

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. This meeting is an excellent opportunity to share your expertise and learn from and network with leaders in the field.



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Due to the low number of physics majors choosing to go into high school teaching positions, there has been an increasing number of physics classrooms led by teachers with little to no background knowledge. These limitations reduce the effectiveness of the class, and tend to go unaddressed by public school systems. The Mitchell Institute Physics Enhancement Program was created to address these issues through assisting out-of-field teachers in gaining necessary background knowledge. Over a two week period, participants work with physics faculty as well as two master high school physics teachers, training in both their subject knowledge and implementation. Participant pre- and post-program knowledge and confidence were measured using an assessment compiled of questions from mechanics, electricity and magnetism, optics, and modern physics. New results from the 2021 and 2022 cohorts will be presented. Analysis of our findings will also be discussed to encourage other institutions to create similar programs.

Further development of out-of-field high school teacher preparation

Many K-12 teachers are teaching physics for the first time and are unfamiliar with best practices for the management of labs, demos, and materials. When teachers feel uncomfortable with labs and equipment, they simply won't do the labs, to the detriment of their students. This is an area where experienced physics teachers can greatly support and empower those new to teaching physics. New teachers should be given time within a professional development setting to use lab materials, gain familiarity with best lab practices in the classroom, and learn how to organize equipment effectively and safely. I will discuss my experiences with leading “New Physics Teacher Workshops” as well as professional development for my company, including outreach to find teachers needing help, motivation for teachers to attend the PD, and the gains they have made through attending.

Professional Development for K-12 Teachers New to Physics Labs

The motion of non-inertial reference frames and the forces involved in understanding them (Coriolis and centrifugal forces) are challenging concepts for introductory and advanced mechanics students. Predicting trajectories of an object due to fictitious forces is another challenge for students. An effective way of presenting this new material has been to create a complex rotating apparatus with two cameras or to find footage of such an apparatus. We built an interactive simulation of the traditional apparatus that many students find helpful when trying to understand the motion of objects in non-inertial reference frames. Students can change both the velocity of an object and the angular velocity of the reference frame it is viewed in and then view a real-time, side-by-side comparison of the object in different reference frames. The simulation was built in JavaScript, so it will run on most browsers on a computer or mobile device.

Creating an Interactive Simulation for Non-Inertial Reference Frames

The use of new technologies for educational purposes has been the subject of great interest in the general education and discipline-based education research communities. In recent years, new technological developments have emerged in the domains of Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR). In this work we present our development of five AR and MR enhanced simulations to support instruction in a second semester introductory physics course covering electricity and magnetism. The simulations were designed to support student learning by leveraging the improved visualization, interactivity, and immersion opportunities these technologies afford. We present preliminary versions of our simulations developed for iOS and Android smartphones, Microsoft HoloLens devices, and traditional PCs. Mixed sets of these devices can share synchronized simulations anchored to common spatial locations, and participants are able to work together in person or remotely.

Cross-Platform Interactive Simulations for Introductory Physics

When the pandemic forced most of us online, many teachers made use of their college’s Learning Management System. However, I have always found such systems to be slow and laggy, requiring way too many steps to update, and thus almost unusable to my ADHD brain. It was even more challenging during my wandering adjunct days when I might be teaching at multiple schools with their own systems and setups. Fortunately, I have dabbled in web development and was able to come up with an alternative. In this presentation I will describe some of the tools and practices I have created to replace the LMS with something more efficient for myself and my students alike.

Replacing the LMS as an ADHD Professor and Web Developer

Engaging students with well-designed clicker questions is one of the commonly used research-based instructional strategy in physics courses partly because it has a relatively low barrier to implementation. Moreover, validated robust sequences of clicker questions are likely to provide better scaffolding support and guidance to help students build a good knowledge structure of physics than an individual clicker question on a particular topic. Here we discuss the development, validation and in-class implementation of a clicker question sequence (CQS) for helping advanced undergraduate students learn about Larmor precession of spin, which takes advantage of the learning goals and inquiry-based guided learning sequences in a previously validated Quantum Interactive Learning Tutorial (QuILT). The in-class evaluation of the CQS using peer instruction is discussed by comparing upper-level undergraduate students’ performance after traditional lecture-based instruction and after engaging with the CQS.

Developing clicker questions on Larmor precession of spin in QM

The susceptible-infectious-recovered (SIR) model is used to gain insights into the spread of COVID-19 in the United States during the omicron wave from December 2021 to April 2022. During that time, new COVID-19 infections are believed to have been caused primarily by the omicron (B.1.1.529) variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. In our model we assume that the reported infection rate data were caused solely by the omicron variant, independent of prior infection by other variants of COVID-19 and vaccinations. We fitted the infection rate data to the SIR model using three adjustable parameters: model population size, infection rate constant, and initial number infectious. Those parameters determine the height, width, and timing of the peak in the omicron wave, respectively. The resulting model successfully explains the omicron wave in the US, thus providing support for our assumptions and indicating that there is no significant difference between selected States of the Union.

Modeling the Omicron Wave of COVID-19 with the SIR Model

Helium-filled High Altitude Balloons (HABs) have been used by St. Catherine University all women’s research team to investigate the near-space environment. Due to low pressure, the balloons expand until they burst at approximately 32 km. Cosmic ray showers colliding with atmospheric particles are significant in the region where these HABs are flown. One of the constituents of the collision process is neutrons. A personal neutron dosimeter (PND) can be used to quantify neutrons through the appearance of bubbles as a result of neutron reactions with a liquid substrate. Over the years, flights have been flown consisting of a PND, heater circuit, Geiger – Mueller tubes, GPS, and a GoPro camera. Data analysis shows a correlation between the altitude of the neutrons in comparison to other shower-generated particles. The particle peak occurs between 15-25 km – correlating to the charged particle maximum known as the Regener-Pfotzer maximum.

Personal Neutron Dosimeter Measuring Cosmic Rays in Stratospheric Ballooning Missions.

Our goal is to create a mathematical function to represent what free choice is, using primarily philosophy as well as statistical and quantum mechanics. Other researchers are working on similar projects pertaining to agency and consciousness, of which we have employed ideas from theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli (Rovelli 2020) and a group at the Wisconsin Institute (Oizumi et al. 2014). We assume the existence of free will, because regardless of whether or not we have it, we act in accordance with it. A more rigorous de?nition of freedom of choice must be a prerequisite to any deeper understanding of free will. The project is within the scope of theoretical physics, requiring precision about how conscious phenomenon is described within our model. Carlo Rovelli’s Agency in Physics focuses on connecting statistical mechanics with modes of agency (2020), while Ian Durham's model has been creating a function of adaptive free choice (2021).

Defining Adaptive Free Choice in a Conscious System

The topic of my talk will be inclusion. I will define inclusion as one of acceptance. An acceptance of at a minimum, of at least a fair “listening too”. This would mean a listening to not only other ideas, but listening to other people’s point of view on all sorts of things including life. Listening to a different culture than yours. Listening to the community where you teach at. Listening to your students. Finally, listening to your heart and understanding what it is telling you. This concept has been talked about and written about by myself and others to also mean “two eyed seeing” and I have personally added “two ears listening”. Really listening to others is not as easy as it sounds. I will be giving examples of what I mean during this talk. Come and “listen” it will be fun!

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Place-based education in high school physical science

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