United States

Young students are often enamored by the promise of exotic fundamental discoveries in the field of high-energy particle physics. Unfortunately, it is less often that I meet a young student who sees condensed matter physics in the same light. To help inspire more students to pursue condensed matter, I’ll start by illustrating how both fields (condensed matter and high-energy) are at the frontier of fundamental understanding. There is a fruitful exchange of theoretical concepts and theoretical techniques between the two fields. Then, I&#39;ll highlight a few condensed matter experimental systems, from my lab, and from colleagues at other universities. The common theme will be exotic phases of matter that arise when strongly interacting electrons dance with each other: in carbon nanotubes, in graphene, and at the interface between&amp;nbsp;semiconductors and superconductors. This talk is intended for anyone who teaches introductory physics, from high school to college.

AAPT WM 21

Condensed Matter Experiments that Use Strongly Interacting Electrons

condensed matter

solid state

materials

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Young students are often enamored by the promise of exotic fundamental discoveries in the field of high-energy particle physics. Unfortunately, it is less often that I meet a young student who sees condensed matter physics in the same light. To help inspire more students to pursue condensed matter, I’ll start by illustrating how both fields (condensed matter and high-energy) are at the frontier of fundamental understanding. There is a fruitful exchange of theoretical concepts and theoretical techniques between the two fields. Then, I'll highlight a few condensed matter experimental systems, from my lab, and from colleagues at other universities. The common theme will be exotic phases of matter that arise when strongly interacting electrons dance with each other: in carbon nanotubes, in graphene, and at the interface between&nbsp;semiconductors and superconductors. This talk is intended for anyone who teaches introductory physics, from high school to college.

technical paper

Brown et al. (1) demonstrated that explicitly incentivizing students in quantum mechanics to correct their mistakes on midterm problems assists students on improving their performance on the same problems as featured on a final exam. We discuss a similar investigation into a first-semester upper-division electromagnetism course, taught at a large research university in the Mountain West, in which 25 students were similarly given explicit incentives to rework three unit exam problems (one for each of three unit exams). For each problem, we compare students who chose to rework their errors for credit with students who did not. We discuss initial findings as follows: for one of the three problems, the explicit incentivization shows a statistically significant benefit for students who accepted the incentive. For the other two problems, certain issues (e.g. an unexpected ceiling effect on midterm attempts) are discussed in terms of affecting outcomes.

Evaluating Explicit Incentives to Correct Mistakes in Upper-Division Electromagnetism

Research-based instructional strategies (RBIS) have been proven effective in improving student learning gains and in reducing course drop rates. Unfortunately, these strategies are not the norm for many physics departments. Studies indicate that some 1/3 of instructors who try RBIS discontinue the use, perhaps because the RBIS were not seen as successful or were viewed as too time consuming. One possible remedy is to have faculty looking to try RBIS co-teach with instructors who’ve previously used these strategies. We will report on our experiences flipping an upper-level quantum mechanics course working with just such a model. We believe this approach could increase the number of instructors who decide to try RBIS as well as increase the probability that these first attempts will lead to further use.

Who Flipped Our Class?

Introductory quantum mechanics can be challenging to students because many concepts are nonintuitive and the development of quantum intuition faces numerous hurdles. One important pathway to developing such intuition through problem-solving is limited due to the fact that few time-independent problems, and virtually no time-dependent problems, are analytically solvable. Computational modeling, however, can be an effective, complementary pathway to developing quantum insight and deepening conceptual understanding. In this presentation we will discuss computation in introductory quantum mechanics with examples to enhance student learning and active engagement (see http://www.faculty.umassd.edu/j.wang/ for some examples).

Enhancing learning and engagement in quantum mechanics with computation

Muon and neutrino classroom activities and exercises involving experimental data are extremely rare.&nbsp; Using the Arachne viewer for the MINERvA experiment at Fermilab, students can analyze data sets of muon decays to determine the following: the half-life of a muon, the energy spectrum of the daughter Michel electrons, and the existence of two other neutral daughter particles.&nbsp; Furthermore, by cleverly using conservation laws, students can deduce that these neutral particles must be an electron neutrino and a muon antineutrino.&nbsp; In this talk we will present three activities that help achieve student success with this muon decay analysis.&nbsp; First will be a simple rolling of a die activity, followed by the muon decay and lifetime analysis, and finally the deduction of existence of neutrino decay products using conservation laws.

Muon Half-life and the Inference of Neutrino Decay Products

Large neutrino experiments like MINERvA, NOvA, and MicroBooNE provide data that physics teachers and students can analyze to learn about analysis techniques, practice scientific skills, and learn how physics concepts taught in introductory physics courses apply to contemporary experiments. QuarkNet has created workshops for its member teachers based on activities from the QuarkNet Data Activities Portfolio that build toward an authentic neutrino data analysis from one of the neutrino experiments. In these workshops, teachers discuss and develop implementation plans on how activities, skills, and ideas from the workshop can be transferred into the classroom. We will examine Neutrino Data Workshops, how teachers can get involved, and how the model can be used in teacher professional development.

QuarkNet Neutrino Data Workshop

Around the 5th grade, students make a conceptual leap in their understanding of the world around them. In the NGSS, it's at this time that students should be mastering the idea that "matter is made up of particles too small to be seen". How can we help them make this conceptual change?&nbsp; The Sanford Underground Research Facility has developed a curriculum unit to do just that. The unit begins with a phenomenon that all students have seen but maybe not thought about deeply: salt dissolving in water. What happens to the salt? They investigate this phenomenon through the lens of the crosscutting concept 'Scale, Proportion and Quantity'. They develop models to help understand the size of atoms then extend those models to the size of neutrinos. Using these models help students make sense of why scientists need 70,000 tons of argon in future neutrino detectors.&nbsp;

Ghost Particles: Neutrinos for 5th Graders?

When best practices for teaching are applied to professional development, instructors are supported to challenge their inaccurate ideas about teaching and learning and reconstruct beliefs and teaching practices that have been shown to improve student learning outcomes. The Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) at Miami University engages learning communities, cohorts, and unstructured groups of personnel who teach in learner-centered programming centered on scholarly teaching. By making programming available to all ranks of faculty, graduate students, and staff, the CTE can support anyone who is interested, including non-tenure track faculty. This presentation will outline the principles, philosophy, and structure of CTE programming, particularly how community building and scholarly teaching are central to its operation.

Supporting Instructors: Building Community and Excellence through Scholarly Teaching

In January 2019, the Wright State University (WSU) faculty went on strike.&nbsp; This became the second longest strike in&nbsp;US higher education history.&nbsp;In Fall 2018, the administration proposed a contract that included suspending&nbsp;tenure protections, weakening&nbsp;job security for non-tenure track faculty, cancelling&nbsp;a workload agreement (which enabled quality classroom instruction), no raises, and eliminating&nbsp;the right to negotiate health care.&nbsp;The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) WSU faculty voted and, with 94% responding, 85% authorized a strike.&nbsp;After 20 days, a tentative agreement was reached.&nbsp; A new long-term contract was signed that reversed most of the negative terms and included maintaining the workload agreement, providing faculty raises, and maintaining the right to negotiate health care.&nbsp; Faculty concessions included not having salaries restored for the interval of the strike and degraded health insurance. Since the strike there has been a high turnover in administrators, including the President.

Wright State University Faculty Strike: 20 days in 2019

Regional institutions that serve local populations are ingrained in the culture and community in which they are located. Local and national views about education and politics surrounding education play a major role in how communities, internal and external, view teaching and learning. This can affect instruction, how resources are used, and how students view the practice of teaching. In 2016, Illinois and Chicago faced severe political and funding issues that threatened and impacted education and services throughout the state, sending strong messages about how education is valued. Despite challenges and ongoing resource needs, institutions are able to leverage the community of students and faculty to enact successful efforts. We provide some historical context around teaching and learning at Chicago State University and describe how community can come together, in the context of the Learning Assistant Model, to establish support for teachers (LAs and faculty), creating the best possible learning spaces.

Leveraging the community of students and faculty to support teachers

Most smartphones when placed in a simple $10 plastic viewer become incredibly capable devices for providing virtual reality (VR) experiences. Unfortunately, the learning curve is steep for creating smartphone-based VR content for physics using various software platforms. The Ohio State University led BuckeyeVR group created two free smartphone apps to help teachers create and deliver 3D content using student’s smartphones. Importantly these apps produce stereoscopic 3D content so that the visualization provides the viewer with a sense of depth perception. In this talk I will share the BuckeyeVR electric field app which provides VR views of electric field configurations. I will also describe the BuckeyeVR plotter that allows students and teachers to define and view vector fields, curves and surfaces. I will also briefly describe some of the education research we have done using these visualizations at Ohio State.

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