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Space exploration is a naturally interesting topic to many people. With the advances in spacecraft propulsion methods, it is possible for humans to study distant celestial bodies. Students can investigate the benefits and challenges of both human and non-human travel to space through different means. In this study, we investigated ways to help students understand space exploration. Two activities, Migration to Mars and Solar Sails, were designed for an undergraduate astronomy course taught online during the COVID pandemic. Students completed the activities in groups of four. One activity per group was submitted to the course management software followed by a quiz that students answered individually. Quiz responses were coded to check students’ understanding of the activities and the extent to which they were able to describe information relevant to space exploration. Students generally understood the value of uncrewed missions and the fact that solar sails use sustainable energy.

AAPT WM 22

Students’ Understanding of Factors Related to Space Exploration

space exploration

student understanding

astronomy

This meeting is a great opportunity to explore sessions and workshops designed with your professional development in mind. Present your research and exchange ideas on the latest in teaching and pedagogy. Participate in a wide range of events, activities, plenaries, and so much more, connecting you with peers and colleagues who share your commitment to excellence in physics education.

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Serpentinization highlights the intersection of habitability and geology in comparative planetology. Its significance is enhanced for Mars from orbital nuclear spectroscopy evidence for more mafic crustal chemistry compared to Earth. This may also enable serpentinization to sequester crustal water, possibly complementing phyllosilicate minerals considered recently. However, despite numerous serpentine zones across Earth’s continents, detailed analog studies are limited to a few formations such as the ophiolites in Oman. Meanwhile, autochthonous soils at Sri Lanka’s serpentine zone provide the first laboratory evidence that perchlorates, found across in situ sites on Mars, can facilitate the release of biohazardous cations from soil into brines. The presence of variably developed soils across Sri Lanka’s serpentine zone offers a planetary end-case reference for pedogenesis in serpentinites. Furthermore, several thermal springs near this zone can elucidate fluid chemistry from meteoric waters percolating through serpentinites, significant to paleo-Martian conditions when a surface hydrosphere may have existed.

Mars, Lanka and Habitability: Serpentinization as a Thread of Life

The Loyola University Chicago Department of Physics offers a B.S. in Biophysics program that consists of a balanced blend of biology, chemistry, and physics coursework. As a capstone experience, students must complete an upper-level biophysics course. Although the course has a a significant lecture component with a focus on molecular and cellular biophysics as well as biomechanics, the aim of the course is for students to engage in professional science activities. Classroom activities include interpreting results from journal articles, writing an NIH-style research proposal on an instructor-approved topic with peer reviews, and completing an experimental project. I will present an overview of the course, its activities, and challenges. Students are also encouraged to participate in faculty research, and my undergraduate-only lab has several student researchers conducting experiments in single-molecule DNA microscopy. I will also discuss how the lab recruits students, trains them for research, and mentors their progress.

Transitioning Students from Learning Biophysics to Doing Biophysics

A new active-learning pedagogy is presented that includes computation as a central theme. The approach starts with the "marble game", a kinetic Monte Carlo simulation of diffusion. Students first learn how to play the game by hand and then implement it in Excel to discover that Fick's law of diffusion can be explained by random jumping between two boxes. In a guided-inquiry environment, students apply the same techniques to drug elimination, radioactive decay, osmosis, ligand binding, enzyme kinetics, and ion channel permeation. Students discover for themselves the consequences and significance of model assumptions by reading and interpreting graphs, and by comparing model predictions with real data using linear regression and non-linear least-squares fits. The pedagogical objective is for students to discover for themselves that science is an evidence-based endeavor with testable hypotheses that are supported by experiment.

Biophysics in the Undergraduate Curriculum

In the Paradigms in Physics curriculum at Oregon State University, we teach a series of spins-first quantum mechanics courses that incorporate various types of active-engagement pedagogies. In this talk, I will highlight the kinesthetic activities used in our junior-level Quantum Fundamentals course and their role in the broader context of our quantum mechanics courses. These kinesthetic activities include the Arms Activities where pairs of students use their left arms to embody quantum mechanical spin states and the Quantum Measurement Skit where the class acts out the measurement of quantum states. In addition to presenting the activities, I will discuss results from interviews with students about their understanding and experience with Arms.

Waving Arms and Skits in Quantum Mechanics

Currently, the majority of undergraduate education and workforce training in quantum information science and technology (QIST) is occurring at doctoral-granting institutions. To meet the anticipated quantum workforce needs and to ensure the workforce is demographically representative and inclusive to all communities, the United States must expand on these efforts and incorporate QIST into the curriculum at the nation’s predominantly undergraduate institutions (PUIs). In June 2021 roughly 90 faculty from PUIs participated in a workshop aimed at facilitating this expansion. After panels describing industry needs, current education efforts, and best practices, workshop participants identified challenges they would face when incorporating QIST into curriculum at their institutions. Discussions then focused on strategies and solutions for these challenges. This talk will summarize these discussions including programmatic approaches, gaining institutional support, course content and design, and inclusive practices. I will also discuss ongoing efforts to bring QIST into the curriculum at predominantly undergraduate institutions.

Bringing Quantum Information Science to Students at Predominately Undergraduate Institutions

We developed a board game that incorporates the rules of quantum mechanics into the game play, Quantum Party!. The goal was to create a fun and effective pedagogical instrument that could be used at the high-school or introductory college level, or even sold to the general public. We now have a professional-looking game that can be purchased online by anyone. It comes with multiple tools (dice, spinner) that replicate the science behind 4 classic quantum mechanics experiments/observations, a well as a manual that teaches both the game rules and the science behind the game, and of course, cats! Since its creation, we have run workshops with high-school teachers to brainstorm on how this can be used in the classroom. In this talk, I will give a summary of this process and where we see this going in the future.

Quantum Party! Incorporating quantum mechanics rules into a board game

Machine Learning is becoming ubiquitous in the realms of science, business, law enforcement, and even the arts. Many people don’t realize how rooted in “physics thinking” the foundations of machine learning algorithms are, but physics teachers are well positioned to teach students to use these tools and how to understand their limitations. I have developed a three-week general education course on machine learning for non-scientists, and I adapted several activities for an introductory laboratory sequence in a course on Galaxies and Cosmology. I will report on the successes and challenges of these endeavors and make recommendations on how students can be prepared at multiple educational levels to engage with the opportunities and dangers these tools represent.

Physics Teachers Should Teach Machine Learning

During the pandemic, the format of class instruction changed from in-person to entirely remote. What does a group that provides physics demonstrations to lecturers to supplement instruction do to continue to offer the same level of access to our catalog? We digitize! Working with instructors to identify their needs, we provided short videos of demonstrations performed in various ways. By using multiple cameras, professional editing software, strategic planning, and youtube we have compiled a physics demo video library accessible to the world. Here is what we learned on our journey.

Physics Demonstrations - From the classroom to the remote landscape

Quantum computing is traditionally taught with a mathematical approach, featuring linear algebra and an emphasis on proofs, two subjects not prominent in K-12 education. In this talk, we present our approach of taking QIS key concepts such as superposition, entanglement, measurement, and decoherence, and applying them to familiar situations such as tasting jelly bellies, guessing what card was flipped, and playing Connect 4. Our goal is to understand how young learners conceptualize these concepts in real-world settings, how those conceptions align and do not align with their application to quantum computing, and design instruction that both builds on their existing knowledge and bridges to quantum computing. The end goal is to delay math as much as possible in order to allow early introductions of the concepts.

Building Quantum Computing Intuition through Visuals, Activities, and Games

We present a very simple derivation of the commonly used approximate formula [1]: D = A * sin ((d/365.25) * 2*PI), where D is solar declination, A = 23.44 deg is Earth's axial tilt (obliquity of the ecliptic), and d is the number of days after Equinox. We used the heliocentric cartesian frame of reference with XY plane coplanar to the ecliptic. We analytically calculated the scalar product of the unit vector pointing from the Sun to the Earth and the other unit vector pointing from the Earth to Polaris. This product is equal to the cosine of the angle complementary to the solar declination D. We also demonstrated how we can find the geographic latitude using hands-on observation of the shadow of a yardstick at local geographic noon. The geographic latitude is found with the accuracy of about 1.5 degree (or 100 nautical miles along meridian). Reference: 1.https://www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom/properties-of-sunlight/declination-angle

Students’ Understanding of Factors Related to Space Exploration

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Mars, Lanka and Habitability: Serpentinization as a Thread of Life

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