United States

The description and operation of a horn radio telescope that can be used in introductory physics and astronomy classrooms will be presented. The telescope used in the investigations, which is designed to detect the 21 cm wavelength emitted by atomic hydrogen, can be constructed easily and at an affordable cost. Projects that will be discussed include making a map of hydrogen in the Milky Way Galaxy, measuring its profile, and determining a rotation curve.

AAPT SM 20

Hands-on Radio Astronomy in the Classroom Using a Horn Telescope

galactic structure

doppler shift

hydrogen spectrum

astronomy curriculum

horn telescope

radio astronomy

The 2020 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting brought together physics educators from around the globe to learn about the latest in physics theory, research methodology and education from leaders in their field. The program featured plenary speakers, sessions, workshops and many special activities.

For more information please visit the 2020 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting page at: https://www.aapt.org/Conferences/SM2020/index.cfm.


The 2020 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting brought together physics educators from around the globe to learn about the latest in physics theory, research methodology and education from leaders in their field. 

technical paper

This talk summarizes the use of interactive simulations and activities integrated with an adaptive online platform to teach introductory calculus-based physics at Portland State University. We discuss the designing of activities using Geogebra and Phet simulations to teach and illustrate physics concepts. Simple activities highlighting concepts in topics such as the movement of a disturbance, interference, beats, standing waves, harmonics in waves and sound, refraction and image formation in geometrical optics, diffraction, and interference of light, thermodynamics, vectors, forces, and friction in mechanics. The design of the simulations is such that they seamlessly integrate into a course that aims to promote active and engaged learning.

Using Interactive Simulations in Adaptive Calculus-based General Physics Courses

An instructional intervention consisting of students interacting with eight short videos on scientific topics was introduced to a general education physics class. The effects of these videos had on student attitudes about science and their scientific reasoning skills were assessed by comparison of pre- and post-test data from the CLASS and Lawson's Test of Scientific Reasoning for two control and three treatment semesters. Initial findings showed improved student attitudes toward science and improved scientific reasoning skills. With continued use of the videos in additional semesters, similar pre-post gains in scientific reasoning skills were observed, however, less improvement in student attitudes toward science was measured. This decrease in improvement of student attitudes as the new course activity became standard has implications for the number of semesters a new curriculum aimed at improving student attitudes should be studied. Most new curricula only report a semester or two of results before wide implementation occurs.

Changes in Student Attitudes and Curricular Benefits as a New Course Activity Becomes Standard

Student assistants (SA), which includes graduate and undergraduate teaching/learning assistants, are pivotal to non-traditional physics instruction in large classrooms. Despite its effectiveness, little is known about how SA-student interactions promote students’ learning. How should SAs respond to students’ questions? What support should SAs provide or refrain? What makes a SA effective or ineffective? We are particularly interested in SAs’ questioning skills. We propose a coding scheme to scrutinize SA-student interactions. For analysis, we segment a SA video into vignettes based on different situations SAs encounter and define activities like guiding questions, probing questions, and imparting information. From the pattern of activities, we code a vignette as one of the 6 levels on the hierarchy of students’ accountability. The frequency of certain levels in multiple vignettes could suggest a SA’s practical knowledge of questioning, which will be compared with SAs’ narrated knowledge measured by a written test of their questioning skills.

Scrutinize SA-student interaction in inquiry-oriented college physics courses

Heavily motivated by the 2016 AAPT Undergraduate Curriculum Task Force Report, the Physics Department at Lewis University in Romeoville, IL revised its curriculum to include more computational skills throughout. This talk will address how Lewis embeds computational components into the core curriculum as student learning outcomes with College and University wide acceptance. The dual environment model used by Lewis, which emphasizes VPython and Maple, will be articulated. An outline of the curriculum and examples of how the model is executed will be presented along with anecdotal evidence of success. Finally, the talk will describe how Lewis strives to empower educators in the Chicagoland area to enhance their curriculum with computational skill sets.

Threading Computation into the Physics Curriculum at Lewis University

The Effective Practices for Physics Programs (EP3) Project aims to help physics programs respond to challenges they already face with a collection of knowledge, experience, and proven good practice. In addition to a written guide, the EP3 Project will run a Departmental Action Leadership Institute (DALI), a two-day in-person workshop and year-long virtual community to support department members in leading improvements to their program that align with EP3. Five departments will select two faculty members each to participate in a DALI. These participants will learn to effectively lead a local departmental team, strengthen the capacity of that team to create and sustain change, and help the team to implement and assess their plans—all with the goal of developing a culture of continuous self-reflection, assessment, and improvement in the department. We will discuss the goals, structure, and planned implementation of DALIs in this presentation.

Supporting Program Improvement with a Departmental Action Leadership Institute

While computers have long played an important part in Physics laboratory instruction, the scope of their use is often limited to relatively simple data processing tasks like fitting experimental data to well-established analytical models. While these applications are obviously important, they are not representative of the full range of ways that computers are used in modern physics research laboratories. In this talk, I will discuss how the Physics department at Willamette University has created engaging laboratory experiences that tightly integrate experiment, theory, and computational modeling and incorporate modern computational tasks like data visualization, simulation of experimental systems, and computer-aided design and fabrication of experimental apparatus. These activities have reduced the time that faculty spend training undergraduates to work in their labs allowing students to make more significant research contributions, while also helping them acquire crucial computation skills that they will need as they join the 21st century workforce.

Modern Computer Applications in the Advanced Laboratory

Teacher self-efficacy is as important as teacher content knowledge: do the teachers see themselves as able to know and teach the material well? In the Maine Physical Sciences Partnership, we worked with teachers to improve the teaching and learning of middle and high school physical science. As part of this work, we had teachers take and analyze a survey on energy that their students would be answering. One group was recorded as they discussed the survey, question by question. Telling their story involves describing the survey and providing examples of their low and high self-efficacy statements. They answered every question correctly, constructing their responses slowly but carefully. But, they began the activity by expressing profound uncertainty in their content knowledge. By the time the activity ended, the level of confidence they expressed in their knowledge and their ability to teach it had increased considerably.

Changes in Teacher Self-Efficacy In Knowing and Teaching Energy

The STEP UP Project is focused on challenging societal beliefs surrounding the roles of women in physics and helping interested young women achieve their goals to become physicists. The movement includes many high school physics teachers across the country. Of many teachers recruited to implement the STEP UP lessons, three returned student essays associated with the Women in Physics lesson. Students wrote essays before and after a class discussion, and we compared the students’ pre-assignment response with those of the post-assignment and noted changes, if any, in the students’ thoughts on the discouragement of women from studying physics. We compared students’ shift in beliefs before and after the lesson and constructed diagrams showing changes between the pre- and post-assignment.

STEP UP: Examining the Effects of Two Interventions on the Physics Identities of Students Interested in Medical Careers

This study will inform the Physics Education Research community about patterns of research topics, partnerships between researchers, and funding sources for the PER community over the last ten years. The study involves a textual analysis of all PERC proceedings between 2010 to 2019 to identify funding sources and determine patterns. PERC proceedings were selected given the central role of the Physics Education Research Conference to the PER community. PERC proceedings represent the community across scope of project from small to large, across stage of project from beginning to finished, and from new researchers to those established in the field. Findings are contrasted with those from the Learning Sciences community to provide context for understanding the significance of patterns. The goal of this work is to provide insight into the community’s history and ten-year trajectory so that the community can consider how to move the field forward in new directions.

Investigating partnerships and funding for the Physics Education Research community

Gathering and sharing personal stories is a science communication approach that communities have used to showcase the range of individuals who participate in their respective community. In this talk I will share my experiences as an undergraduate writing a column focused on one university’s Physics community for the student newspaper. I originally treated this as a journalistic activity in which I interviewed a member of the community about a specific topic and presented my account of the conversation supplemented by outside resources. Now, as a graduate student, I am critically reflecting on the process of writing the columns. As I do this, I am finding lessons that can inform future projects that aim to share stories from community members. I will discuss the process of writing these columns and my current thoughts resulting from critical reflections, connecting this with work that others have done around representation in research communities.

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Hands-on Radio Astronomy in the Classroom Using a Horn Telescope

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Using Interactive Simulations in Adaptive Calculus-based General Physics Courses

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