United States

&lt;p dir=&quot;ltr&quot;&gt;Providing students the opportunity to explore cultural aspects of cosmology (such as those of Indigenous, non-Western, or marginalized groups) can be a powerful way to foster safe spaces within astronomy. We are investigating the impacts of such a project, used in an upper-division course but adaptable to introductory astronomy. Students’ written reflections and oral interviews suggest that their interest in cosmology specifically and astronomy in general was strengthened by studying and presenting on the cosmology of a non-dominant culture or narrative. They reported surprise in the number of ways where the cosmological beliefs of their selected culture aligned with current science, within the limitations of available technology of the time. Students also reported that engaging with the projects made them feel like the astronomical community would be welcoming of them, even if they are not from the majority demographic, and that it supported goals of continued astronomical learning.&lt;/p&gt;

AAPT WM 22

Investigating the Impacts of a Cultural Cosmology Project

diversity and inclusion

cosmology

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.


AAPT SM 20

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. 

Providing students the opportunity to explore cultural aspects of cosmology (such as those of Indigenous, non-Western, or marginalized groups) can be a powerful way to foster safe spaces within astronomy. We are investigating the impacts of such a project, used in an upper-division course but adaptable to introductory astronomy. Students’ written reflections and oral interviews suggest that their interest in cosmology specifically and astronomy in general was strengthened by studying and presenting on the cosmology of a non-dominant culture or narrative. They reported surprise in the number of ways where the cosmological beliefs of their selected culture aligned with current science, within the limitations of available technology of the time. Students also reported that engaging with the projects made them feel like the astronomical community would be welcoming of them, even if they are not from the majority demographic, and that it supported goals of continued astronomical learning.

technical paper

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.

Dual Process Theories of Reasoning (DPTOR) state that cognition has two major processes: a fast, automatic process (heuristic) and a slow, reflective process (analytic). Many introductory physics students use the heuristic that acceleration and velocity are the same thing. In a Conceptual Physics class, multiple choice questions on free fall were preceded by multiple choice “check” questions - one on forces in free fall, and one on Newton’s 2nd Law. This work refines a pilot study using more complex knowledge statements. That data suggested that the inclusion of the knowledge statements served as a productive intervention for engaging the analytic process, but the pattern of answers suggested that the knowledge statements were ambiguous. Student responses to check questions were more consistent than knowledge statements with similar performance on the free-fall questions. 80% of the students who answered the check questions correctly also answered all the free-fall questions correctly.

Refining an Intervention to Prompt Reflective Thinking

A successful research team and project require the participants to apply a diverse set of skills and habits. However, in the traditional training experience early-career researchers typically do not learn these elements until they are already in the midst of a research activity. In collaboration with the Fermilab Quarknet high-school research internship program, we developed a pilot research curriculum to help prepare the students with essential research skills. In this curriculum, we discuss how to come up with research topics, how to read scientific papers, how to approach the research process and provide training sessions for research communications. &nbsp;For this presentation, we will describe our goals for developing this program, and how we carried out our pilot in the summer of 2021, and plans for evaluating and updating the program.

SHIRE: A Skills-Focused Curriculum for New Researchers

Physics students can enjoy learning soft skills that will be useful for future professional careers. Enhancing soft skills will help physics students to have successful careers.&nbsp;We would like to explore the possibilities to embed emotional intelligence into physics classrooms.&nbsp;

Embedding Emotional Intelligence into Physics Education

This research focuses on data collected from Canvas on grades, participation, page views and student activity with the course material from one synchronous section and one asynchronous section of an introductory astronomy course. The course was participation based with chapter quizzes, tutorials, tutorial quizzes and written assignments. No exams were given. The analysis of the correlation between participation per week and grades per week was made, showing that engagement with the course material and canvas did not impact grades. There was no established relationship made. Students that interacted the most or the least, still received grades that were scattered. For the synchronous and asynchronous sections, as the semester progressed, the average page views decreased. However, when studying the average participation per week, the synchronous class had no specific correlation but the asynchronous section had a steady, linear increase.

Trends Seen In an Introductory Astronomy Course Graded on Participation

Educational evaluation is of great importance to teaching and the development of students. This paper will give some testees a survey of college physics-optics, using 2PL and 3PL of Item Response Theory to analyze and providing thoughts on optimizing the system of learning and teaching. The result shows that advanced ability oriented questions fit well with inspecting and ability building, and fill-in-the-blank test has a higher priority over multiple-choice question. Students are commonly short of advanced ability, and they should focus on the development of intermediate ability and make progress steadily. Teachers should pay attention to complex concepts, trying to lead students and innovate teaching method. Students should emphasize habit training and develop correct overlooks on the world, life and values.

Study on attainment of learning-objectives and practical-effects in introductory-physics course

The standard view is that space and time act together, putting aside the energetic component, leaving STR to valid paradoxes over it. GTR clears this up and deals, inclusive, with accelerated frames of&nbsp;reference, where energy acting over spacetime is the essential part of the GTR equations. Still, the primary attention is over, the challenge to imagine Minkowski's 4-dimensional spacetime. Their representations commonly express a curved space &amp; time consequence of energy over spacetime instead from its origins, the equivalent moving space by the presence of proper energy and surrounding ones.

An Intuitive Way to Understand Curved Spacetime

The arm and shoulder is a major part of the body, but unfortunately, not a lot of related simulations are available. Through GeoGebra, we developed an interactive simulation of forces of a human arm and shoulder—which these&nbsp;force vectors include the muscle of the bicep and deltoid, and the forces on the shoulder and elbow joints. This simulation helps us understand Newton’s Second Law and the concepts of torque and equilibrium as a learning tool, which can be used in physics classrooms. With further development, this simulation has the potential to be implemented in hospitals and in sports science.&nbsp;

Simulations of Shoulder and Arm

At-home wave mechanics are demonstrated with the inexpensive iOLab sensor system and a slinky.&nbsp; A suprising result is demonstrated by measuring the standing wave&nbsp;speed of a slinky.&nbsp; The wave speed does not appear to increase with Hookean tension on the slinky!&nbsp; The reason is the slinky's linear density also changes in direct proportion with its stretched length.&nbsp; This counterintutive result&nbsp;can be easily explained conceptually and mathematically, providing students with a richer understanding of wave mechanics [Huggins].&nbsp; Most importantly this experiment is easily accomplished at home, even without the iOLab, using a ruler and kitchen scale.&nbsp; The results of this activity from an introductory physics UNE&nbsp;Spring 2021 virtual online course student presentation are provided.&nbsp;&nbsp;Elisha Huggins, Speed of Wave Pulses in Hooke's Law Media, The Physics Teacher&nbsp;46, 142 (2008);&nbsp;https://doi.org/10.1119/1.2840977

The Simple Slinky Wave Speed

This pandemic-motivated lab was created to explore ideas of&nbsp;buoyancy, static equilibrium, and experimental uncertainty for the introductory physics student. The unknown density of an object was determined by weighing&nbsp;it in and out of water. A make-shift scale was created using a ruler and nickels.&nbsp;Particular attention was paid to&nbsp;uncertainties of measurements with the propagation of error&nbsp;carried out&nbsp;using Python.

Determining density with water, a ruler, floss, and some nickels

Based on a mechanical analog to a particle trapping technique, the Paul trap, a lab has been developed to train scientific thinking and experimental problem-solving. It also works to illustrate an important concept in many areas of modern physics. The mechanical trap will together with a simulation give students an introduction to the concept of particle trapping. The lab has been developed to contribute to the ever-important task of making high school physics more interesting, to get more students pursuing careers in STEM, and increasing scientific literacy in the public. Using a design-based approach to developing the lab, its effectiveness on student learning and interest is probed using qualitative and quantitative methods, and initial findings from the study will be presented.

Investigating the Impacts of a Cultural Cosmology Project

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Investigating the Impacts of a Cultural Cosmology Project

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