Ozone, Labs, and Outreach to Students
The discovery of atmospheric ozone depletion, and our fight against the culpable CFC emissions, is an important modern tale. New research from Strahan and Douglass at NASA shows that chlorine levels above Antarctica have been steadily decreasing over the last decade. It's working!
You might remember Tabby's Star, which has an exotic and unexplained pattern of darkening every 750 days. A new analysis has concluded that the dips in the light-curve come from a dust cloud. It's a fun story involving crowd-funding, telescopes, and SETI. It's also a good case-study to illustrate the process of modern science.
Marta Stoeckel has a spectacular paper in The Science Teacher this month. It describes an activity where her students use a Claim-Evidence-Reasoning framework to determine what happens to the energy in a bouncing ball. There's video analysis, effective whiteboarding (below), core physics skills and concepts, and explicit NGSS connections. This activity is, in my opinion, the gold standard for how we should be teaching science.
Holmes and Wieman have an excellent article in Physics Today about the introductory college physics lab. As traditionally done, labs don't seem to reinforce course content, they don't seem to increase student attitudes or understanding of the nature or process or science, and they don't seem to provoke scientific thinking. It looks like the time is ripe for a new approach, and I'm excited to see what they come up with.
A new paper has quantified an important dimension of gender inequality among university professors. Female professors experience more demands from students (office hours, grade-change requests, etc). Meanwhile, "academically entitled" students were more likely to expect favours from a female professor.
A comment by Malcolm Fairbairn ("most outreach to kids to get them to do science has a negative effect") caught my attention this week. I couldn't find the IOP reference he alludes to, but did find plenty of evidence that science outreach programs have positive impacts. One summer program increased student enrolment in science classes and pursuit of scientific careers, while another helped sustain interest in science for students as they progressed from middle school to high school. These programs increased student interest, and this scientist-in-the-classroom program also helped dispel negative stereotypes about scientists. My favourite study was a thoughtful and thorough follow-up on $12.6M of grants to university-based school outreach programs which found that, in fact, the money was well spent (see the table below, for example). In conclusion: good outreach programs are very effective.
The Mpembda Effect is named after a Tanzanian student who noticed that sometimes warm water freezes quicker than cooler water. The effect is still not understood, in part because it is hard to reproduce. Jennifer Ouellette has a write-up in Physics World. This is a great one to share with students.
Physics Today has a nice article about Mary Sommerville, by James Secord. The bio reminds me of Émilie du Châtelet, by Robyn Arianrhod in Cosmos. Both women were pivotally important in the development of fundamental physics, but were permitted to participate only as commentators and authors -- not as knowledge originators -- and were subsequently forgotten.
If you're a PER person, here's some information about the Gordon and ICPE meetings this year. The winter AAPT meeting is going on right now so keep your ears peeled!
If you're a high school teacher with some keen students, the Beamline for Schools is open again this year. Here are the two winners from last year. Very cool projects.
During today's (excellent as always) #iteachphysics chat, Lawrence pointed out that the popular physics section of the arXiv is a goldmine of fascinating, student-accessible papers on interesting topics.
* From the web:
Jenifer Millard shared this 10-year animation of the Crab Nebula
Erik Neumann has a page of superb physics simulations
* Research Experiences for high school:
In Greenland/Antarctica (USA/Denmark)
Space Camp Scholarships (USA)
* Research Experiences for undergrads:
A list from Científico Latino
Diamond Light Source (EU - applications close Jan 11)
APS/IBM Internships (USA)
You might remember Tabby's Star, which has an exotic and unexplained pattern of darkening every 750 days. A new analysis has concluded that the dips in the light-curve come from a dust cloud. It's a fun story involving crowd-funding, telescopes, and SETI. It's also a good case-study to illustrate the process of modern science.
Marta Stoeckel has a spectacular paper in The Science Teacher this month. It describes an activity where her students use a Claim-Evidence-Reasoning framework to determine what happens to the energy in a bouncing ball. There's video analysis, effective whiteboarding (below), core physics skills and concepts, and explicit NGSS connections. This activity is, in my opinion, the gold standard for how we should be teaching science.
Holmes and Wieman have an excellent article in Physics Today about the introductory college physics lab. As traditionally done, labs don't seem to reinforce course content, they don't seem to increase student attitudes or understanding of the nature or process or science, and they don't seem to provoke scientific thinking. It looks like the time is ripe for a new approach, and I'm excited to see what they come up with.
A new paper has quantified an important dimension of gender inequality among university professors. Female professors experience more demands from students (office hours, grade-change requests, etc). Meanwhile, "academically entitled" students were more likely to expect favours from a female professor.
A comment by Malcolm Fairbairn ("most outreach to kids to get them to do science has a negative effect") caught my attention this week. I couldn't find the IOP reference he alludes to, but did find plenty of evidence that science outreach programs have positive impacts. One summer program increased student enrolment in science classes and pursuit of scientific careers, while another helped sustain interest in science for students as they progressed from middle school to high school. These programs increased student interest, and this scientist-in-the-classroom program also helped dispel negative stereotypes about scientists. My favourite study was a thoughtful and thorough follow-up on $12.6M of grants to university-based school outreach programs which found that, in fact, the money was well spent (see the table below, for example). In conclusion: good outreach programs are very effective.
The Mpembda Effect is named after a Tanzanian student who noticed that sometimes warm water freezes quicker than cooler water. The effect is still not understood, in part because it is hard to reproduce. Jennifer Ouellette has a write-up in Physics World. This is a great one to share with students.
Physics Today has a nice article about Mary Sommerville, by James Secord. The bio reminds me of Émilie du Châtelet, by Robyn Arianrhod in Cosmos. Both women were pivotally important in the development of fundamental physics, but were permitted to participate only as commentators and authors -- not as knowledge originators -- and were subsequently forgotten.
If you're a PER person, here's some information about the Gordon and ICPE meetings this year. The winter AAPT meeting is going on right now so keep your ears peeled!
If you're a high school teacher with some keen students, the Beamline for Schools is open again this year. Here are the two winners from last year. Very cool projects.
During today's (excellent as always) #iteachphysics chat, Lawrence pointed out that the popular physics section of the arXiv is a goldmine of fascinating, student-accessible papers on interesting topics.
* From the web:
Jenifer Millard shared this 10-year animation of the Crab Nebula
Erik Neumann has a page of superb physics simulations
* Research Experiences for high school:
In Greenland/Antarctica (USA/Denmark)
Space Camp Scholarships (USA)
* Research Experiences for undergrads:
A list from Científico Latino
Diamond Light Source (EU - applications close Jan 11)
APS/IBM Internships (USA)