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Transforming an introductory physics class to meet the needs of life science majors is no easy task.&amp;nbsp; It requires curiosity, humility, dedication, and a willingness to be a novice learner again.&amp;nbsp; Honestly, it may not be for everyone.&amp;nbsp; But for those educators who are willing and able to undergo this reform, the rewards of a deep connection with life science students and pre-health professionals are immensely satisfying.&amp;nbsp; In this talk I highlight my experiences reforming the introductory class at a former university, the resources and educators who were most influential, and the early stages of my quest to bring an IPLS class to my current college.&amp;nbsp; Finally, I share a new podcast that I just released called Physics Alive*, where I interview PER and IPLS instructors and researchers.&amp;nbsp; This podcast provides an opportunity for listeners to discover new ideas and even use episodes in their classrooms. *https://physicsalive.com/

AAPT WM 21

Back to School: Physicists Learning the Life Sciences for IPLS

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reform

life science

physics alive

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podcast

health

AAPT® is a strong professional physics science society dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in physical science education.

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Transforming an introductory physics class to meet the needs of life science majors is no easy task.&nbsp; It requires curiosity, humility, dedication, and a willingness to be a novice learner again.&nbsp; Honestly, it may not be for everyone.&nbsp; But for those educators who are willing and able to undergo this reform, the rewards of a deep connection with life science students and pre-health professionals are immensely satisfying.&nbsp; In this talk I highlight my experiences reforming the introductory class at a former university, the resources and educators who were most influential, and the early stages of my quest to bring an IPLS class to my current college.&nbsp; Finally, I share a new podcast that I just released called Physics Alive*, where I interview PER and IPLS instructors and researchers.&nbsp; This podcast provides an opportunity for listeners to discover new ideas and even use episodes in their classrooms. *https://physicsalive.com/

technical paper

One challenge when&nbsp;teaching physics to life science students is that they do not see the connections between physics and their other coursework.. Additionally, some teachers of introductory physics believe that PER-based tools such as motion maps and energy graphs are not used&nbsp;aside of physics class and so they focus on&nbsp;algebraic problem-solving algorithms. I have found that including work from recent experimental biology in introductory physics courses can both provide relevance to bio-focused students and show physics faculty colleagues that the multiple representations used by PER informed textbook authors are used actively and effectively in current biological and biomedical contexts. Several examples from applications as diverse as bio-mechanical engineering, ethology, and molecular biology will be discussed to highlight where to look for good examples and how to incorporate such materials in introductory courses.

Mining Biological Research when Developing Curricular Materials for Introductory Physics

In the online environment, we are encouraged to find ways to assess student progress that are resistant to online cheating, and also provide an especially &nbsp;supportive environment for learning in these challenging times. &nbsp;&nbsp;Our first semester IPLS course, serving a pre-PT and exercise science population, &nbsp;focuses heavily on biomechanics.&nbsp;&nbsp; After digital practice with provided biomechanics scenarios, focusing on different aspects every week, students work on those aspects in scenarios of their own.&nbsp;&nbsp; These weekly scenario digital submissions are submitted as drafts and feedback is given in screencasts going over their work.&nbsp;&nbsp; The subsequent revisions are what is assessed for competence in the learning outcomes of the course

Students own biomechanics scenarios with digital practice and screencast feedback

Bringing computational thinking into the science classroom is more important than ever. Here we look at a series of web-based astronomy lab activities that use modern computing and data science paradigms to process authentic datasets that ask students to investigate underlying phenomena using inquiry and exploration. These activities work when students are learning face to face or when doing remote learning. Google CoLab means access to a high-quality Python programming environment that allows for collaboration between students while eliminating the daunting learning curve associated with setting up a programming environment. Modern data science techniques for analysis and visualization appear throughout the activities where appropriate.

Web-based Astronomy Coding Labs

Most of the exoplanets discovered by the&nbsp; Kepler &nbsp;mission were detected by the&nbsp; transit method , which gives the radius of the planet. Use of the&nbsp; radial velocity&nbsp; or&nbsp; Doppler-detection &nbsp; method &nbsp;gave us the mass for a number of these planets which allows their densities to be determined.&nbsp;&nbsp;Comparison of these densities to the densities of the planets considered to be of similar type based on radii in our own solar system shows that some exoplanets of similar size to low-density “ ice-giants ,” like Uranus or Neptune , have greater densities more like the smaller , rock-metal&nbsp; terrestrial &nbsp;or Earth-like planets of our solar system and that the reverse is true; that some smaller, more Earth-sized , exoplanets have lower-densities more similar to the larger ice and gas giants in our solar system.&nbsp;

Densities of Extra Solar Planets

An astronaut floating at rest in Skylab and a hurricane floating over a very smooth ocean are similar. The astronaut can suddenly rotate arms, but torso also moves and total angular momentum stays zero. The hurricane can begin spinning, but it also orbits in the opposite direction and total angular momentum stays zero. It is wrong to think that a hurricane has only spin angular momentum. It is also wrong to think that they are blown west by trade winds. They move west because the earth is a sphere and the Coriolis force is proportional to the sine of the lattitude angle. This, and Bernoulli's principle makes them also move poleward, again because the earth is a sphere. The existence and motion of hurricanes demonstrates that the earth spins and is spherical. Application of what we know about the formation and motion of hurricanes, applied&nbsp;to sunspots yields new insight.

Angular Momentum of Astronauts, Hurricanes, and Sunspots

Learn about 19 different physics activities embedded into an astronomy context developed by the Temple/AAPT team of the NASA Space Science Education Consortium. Many of these materials can be incorporated into an online learning environment. Activities cover topics as wide-reaching as spectroscopy and the likelihood of identifying life in outer space, periodic relationships and solar activity, electromagnetism and auroral currents, motion graphs and coronal mass ejections, and geometric optics and solar eclipses.

Physics in an Astronomy Context: Resources from the NASA SSEC

Filling an important niche in the discipline-based science education research domain, the Journal of Astronomy &amp; Earth Sciences Education JAESE is entering its 8 th year.&nbsp; Initially started to fill the gap left by the termination of the Astronomy Education Review j ournal, JAESE publishes education-based research studies across the broad field of Earth, &nbsp;space, and planetary sciences including the disciplines of astronomy, climate education, energy resource science, environmental science, geology, geography, agriculture, meteorology, planetary sciences, and oceanography education. JAESE uses a double, blind-peer review process to insure the scholarly quality of the astronomy education research studies published.&nbsp; Moreover, JAESE uses an open-access financial model where nominal open-access costs are charged to authors and institutions rather than annual memberships, large library subscriptions, or expensive “gold” open-access fees.

Evolution of the Journal of Astronomy & Earth Sciences Education

For the past few years, the fall semester algebra-based introductory physics labs have been teaching skills alongside content. We instruct students on how to create models and how to use those models to answer experimental questions. When a student is presented with an experimental question, they are given minimal assistance and must design their own experiment based on prior knowledge. For our lab on buoyancy, we introduce the topic in lab first before going into more detail in the lecture. The end goal is for students to discover that the buoyant force is equal to the weight of the water displaced. Students then analyze the results of their experiment and compare class data using a t-test, another learned skill.. We present this discovery lab to give others ideas for new labs that can be done in courses involving physics for the life sciences.

Discovering Buoyancy as an Open-ended Lab

The wave equation for electromagnetic waves, the Helmholtz equation, has the same form as the Schrodinger equation of quantum mechanics. We present the generation of optical beams in Mathieu modes, whose angular solution is the same as the wavefunction for the quantized pendulum. The light in such a mode is generated by a spatial light modulator and imaged by digital cameras. The intensity of the light in the far field is proportional to the probability of finding the pendulum bob as a function of angle. In this experiment students can investigate, quantization, wavefunction symmetry, probabilities and explore non-classical aspects of the quantum solutions. Superpositions can also produce wave-packets that resemble the classical motion. We also focus on states that approximate the harmonic oscillator.

An Advanced Lab on the Quantum Pendulum

My upper level Acoustics course was thrust into virtual mode. I designed a “do this at home” lab exercise which my students could perform with readily available equipment found at home. We did a quick study of the Helmholtz Resonator by using an empty 2 L soda bottle, a measuring cup, a ruler and a smartphone. By measuring the frequency with different amounts of water in the bottle, the students were able to extract a good value for the volume of the empty bottle from their graphical analysis of the data.&nbsp; (Many of them were surprised to discover that it is NOT 2.0 L.) As an assessment of their ability to extend the analysis, an exam question provided them with data for a small pendant-style ocarina, from which they were able to deduce the interior volume of the ocarina. Both the lab and the extension will be described.

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