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“Experimental Techniques” is an intermediate laboratory course designed in part to help students decide whether they want to pursue experimental physics. Key to this goal are meaningful opportunities for creative exploration and problem solving which mimic real-world research. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, by building an interferometer at home using inexpensive department-provided materials, students were afforded opportunities for real creativity while proving that changes in optical path length – not just arm length – lead to fringe evolution. Though the physics involved was significantly simpler than in other experiments, students developed a better understanding of optical path length and interferometry while being introduced to instrumentation and some of the fundamental skills used by experimentalists in the lab. Members of the class also gained a meaningful sense of accomplishment and excitement. Consequently, we are now considering implementing this experiment as part of the in-person version of the course.

AAPT SM 21

Less is More: At-Home Interferometry in Undergraduate Laboratory Course

interferometry

remote instruction

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technical paper

Virtual reality (VR) technology continues to mature at a rapid clip, creating potential for its use as a means of administering "hands-on" physics lab curriculum in hybrid or remote learning contexts. This talk draws from experiences administering VR-enabled labs to classes of 120 students in a hybrid model and 37 students in a remote model to inform answers to key questions around use of VR in remote labs: What advantages does VR offer over traditional "flat" simulations? Do students recognize "hands-on" work done in an immersive 3D environment as being "real" science? How is collaboration between distant students affected by use of VR? What is the current and near-future feasibility of VR technology use in remote instruction? We argue that VR labs have a niche in the remote physics lab instructor's toolbox, and outline current and anticipated applications of VR to remote physics lab instruction.

Virtual Reality Enabling Remote Collaborative Physics Labs

In physics and STEM we tend to teach in the same way across courses. The students watch the instructor solve problems, memorize the process, and regurgitate it later - all while under serious pressure to get good grades. This process can deter students from STEM, encourage cheating, and prevent deeper understanding. I wanted to find out what could contribute to a more enriched learning experience in STEM using feedback from students and teachers. By conducting surveys of students about their experiences with classes, teachers, and online tools I set out to gain a better understanding of what makes an effective and enjoyable STEM education. I will summarize survey results and go over methods to potentially improve the learning experience such as incorporating project-based assessments, offering exam revisions, implementing self-grading, and encouraging collaboration. 


The Student Experience - How to Enrich STEM Education

Scientific researchers across all disciplines are routinely faced with ethical dilemmas in their work. To help strengthen researcher’s knowledge in their ethical reasoning skills, there are required and optional trainings that faculty have to go through every year. The main goal of this study is to investigate how research professors think about ethical issues in their own work. We argue that these programs will be more effective if we can better align them with how scientists think about these dilemmas. In this study, we interviewed fourteen scientists from several disciplines about how they viewed ethics in their research and presented several different case studies specifically designed to include several ethical concerns. We analyze these interviews by focusing on the goals and values they express in their ethical reasoning. This work will inform us on how scientists invoke values in their ethical arguments.

Roles of goals and values in ethical discussions

Scientists are often encouraged to engage in some form of ethical training. With cases of scientific misconduct being reported, we are looking for ways to improve these training sessions. In this study we investigatehow scientists engage in Epistemic Games, and if identifying these games can provide some insight into how scientists engage in ethical discussions. This was done through the lens of a fellowship we formed of fifteen faculty at one university. This fellowship met for numerous sessions in the span of a year to discuss topics in the sciences including reproducibility and integrity in data. These sessions were transcribed and organized into Epistemic Games using three characteristics: the target epistemic form, the entry and exit conditions, and the moves made by the participants. Using these games, we can begin to understand the different factors that influence a group discussion towards a particular goal. With this knowledge, we can then begin to understand if there are situations that prompt someone to invoke more ethical values, and whether this knowledge can be used to improve ethical training.

Investigating How Scientists Engage in Ethical Discussions

As current physics students, we are curious about how intertwined the military-industrial complex is with our potential futures. This question motivated our independent research study at Texas State University. We explored the intersections of ethics, academic physics, and the structure of the military-industrial complex in the United States. In this talk, we describe our motivations to participate in this research and our particular areas of interest. These include the geopolitical context surrounding emerging warfare technologies, current crossover technologies, and the interactions of stakeholders within our contemporary funding landscape. We will reflect on what we’ve learned and share our own personal takeaways from the project.
(This talk is co-presented by both Ciana Pike and Jordan Knight.)

Student Reflections: Exploring Physics, Ethics, and the Military-Industrial Complex

Sensors equipped with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) can stream data into web apps running in the Google Chrome browser. This allows students or instructors to collect data into a web-based electronic lab notebook and immediately collaborate, analyze, and provide feedback. Additionally, this means one web-based platform can provide lab instructions, data collection and analysis, lab report submission, and grading. This greatly expands the ways instructors and students can use data collected from sensors in all teaching environments. Pivot Interactives is one platform that enables this, with a growing list of compatible BLE sensors.

Integrating Bluetooth Sensors into an Web-based Lab Notebook (Pivot Interactives)

Experiments in optics are amenable to simulation and analysis by first year university physics students in a course including a computational environment. Many may be accomplished safely by remote students using only their mobile phones. I describe several applications including camera calibration and precise 3d location of objects using multiple mobile phone images.

Computational optics in first year university physics

The newly developed second year lab course at Brigham Young University was designed to incorporate explicit instruction on leadership and teamwork. Early implementations, resulted in a mixed response from students with negative responses indicating a perceived lack of alignment to the goals of a physics education. Adjustments made in subsequent semesters resulted in increased buy-in from students and indicated improved student engagement. In addition, faculty support increased. We describe the instructional strategy and feedback and suggest what the results inform us about preparing physics undergrads for 21st-century careers.

Developing leadership and teamwork in labs

We will present the design and performance of a complete measurement of a damped harmonic oscillation with the Pasco Smart Cart. Using the position and force sensors from the cart on a steeply inclined track (about 10 degrees from vertical), we measure the displacement, velocity, acceleration and the restoring force of the oscillator, which is the cart on the end of a spring. The students get a full understanding of these quantities in an oscillation, together with the concepts of period and frequency, both graphically, numerically and analytically. With added weights to the cart, the students can measure the spring constant in the system. By fitting to the reduction in the oscillation amplitude, the students can obtain the attenuation from friction. With one instrument, this new lab provides the students with a full range of training in harmonic oscillation. Measurement results and data analysis will be shown in the presentation.

Complete measurement of a damped harmonic oscillation with the Smart-Cart

Entering 2021, COVID-19 still threatens to require remote laboratoryoperation, and new longer-term solutions need to be developed to forstudents to do this. Many kits have been developed for the introduc-tory level during 2020. However, very little has been developed forthe advanced physics laboratory. We have developed a kit that al-lows advanced lab students to perform a set of mini-experiments usingPYTHON, a Raspberry Pi, Arduinos, and Arduino compatible sen-sors. Students are permitted to take the kit home and only need toprovide a few common items, e.g. a ruler, to perform the experiment.This experiment serves as a nice introduction to microcontrollers.The overarching goal is for students to gain familiarity with the Rasp-berry Pi, Arduino, and it’s sensors by performing basic experimentsinwhich the physics is well known and the students learn how toacquire data with these microcontrollers. Students perform mini-experiments from basic kinematics to determining Planck’s constantand using a Geiger-Mueller counter. Students use analog-to-digitalconverters(ADCs), digit-to-analog converters (DACs), accelerometers,and more complex sensors.We give details on the different mini-experiments that the studentsperform. We also discuss some of the learning outcomes as well as howthe experiment can easily be performed at the university or at home.

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Less is More: At-Home Interferometry in Undergraduate Laboratory Course

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