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students with a strong interest in visual phenomena such as art, photojour-
nalism, film, and broadcasting majors. I take a different approach in many
aspects to engage and challenge this population. Principles are introduced
through hands-on inquiry working in groups. Drawings, in particular ray
diagrams, provide a way to be rigorous without a lot of “math.” Assign-
ments involve photographing examples of phenomena and then explaining
them with drawings and text. Artwork from different historical periods is
used to illustrate physical phenomena and ways that science and technol-
ogy have influenced its development. The history of ideas about light, color,
and vision are traced through reading about different figures and selected
historical texts by them. This approach draws upon the many skills my
students bring into the classroom and connect the course to their interests.
Session DF: Innovations in Teaching
High School Astronomy
Location: Skyline IV
Sponsor: Committee on Space Science and Astronomy
Co-Sponsor: Committee on Physics in High Schools
Date: Tuesday, July 16
Time: 10:30–11:20 a.m.
Presider: Trina Cannon
DF01:
10:30-11 a.m. GEARS Astronomy, Bring Astronomy into
Your Science Classroom
Invited – Lindsay E. Bearden, 585 Blackwell Road, Chatsworth, GA 30705;
The GEARS Project (Georgians Experience Astronomy Research in
Schools) was developed with the goal of transforming the way high school
astronomy is taught in Georgia’s public schools. This NASA rich curricu-
lum was created by two college professors and a team of high school teach-
ers. It was dispersed throughout the state via professional development
opportunities. Resource teachers were trained via workshops and graduate-
level astronomy courses, then led their own workshops illustrating how
astronomy can be used within the physical science, chemistry, and physics
curriculum. Come and learn more about this program and how astronomy
can be brought into your classroom! GEARS was Funded by NASA Office
of Education Grant NNX09AH83A and supported by the Georgia Depart-
ment of Education, Columbus State University, and Georgia Southern
University.
DF02:
11-11:10 a.m. Parallax and Aberration: Evaluating
Robert Hooke’s 1669 Parallax Measurement
Contributed – Todd K. Timberlake, Berry College, 2277 Martha Berry Hwy.
NW, Mount Berry, GA 30149-5004;
The annual parallax of a star is a very slight apparent wobble caused by
Earth’s orbital motion around the Sun. In 1669 Robert Hooke sought to
measure the annual parallax of the star gamma Draconis, and thus to prove
the Copernican theory of an orbiting Earth. Hooke claimed success but
his contemporaries were skeptical. Almost 60 years later James Bradley
discovered the aberration of starlight and conclusively showed that Hooke
could not possibly have detected the parallax of gamma Draconis. Bradley
also showed that Hooke had not simply misinterpreted a detection of
aberration (although later astronomers, like John Flamsteed, had done so).
We will examine Hooke’s claims and Bradley’s evidence against them, offer
some speculation about what it was that Hooke was seeing, and discuss
how this episode can be used in an introductory astronomy course to il-
lustrate important aspects of the nature of science.
DF03:
11:10-11:20 a.m. Teaching the Nature of Science with
‘The Pluto Debate’ Role-Playing Game
Contributed – Anthony Crider, Elon University, 2625 Campus Box, Elon, NC
27244;
The Next Generation Science Standards call for students to learn the nature
of science in addition to the core ideas of the disciplines. We have devel-
oped a series of science role-playing games that allow students to debate as-
pects of science from the perspective of scientists in real historical settings.
One of these games, The Pluto Debate, introduces students to the nature of
science, as well as the properties of the Kuiper Belt. Students argue passion-
ately that science knowledge is not fixed but is revised with new evidence.
The class uses both data and rhetoric to argue either that Pluto should or
should not be a planet. Some students also argue that the 2006 vote on a
definition of planet is itself unscientific. The Pluto Debate and many other
chapter-length science games developed through our NSF-CCLI grant are
suitable for use in either high school or introductory college classrooms.
Session DG: Introductory Course
Laboratories and Hands-on Activities
for Life Science Majors
Location: Pavilion West
Sponsor: Committee on Laboratories
Co-Sponsor: Committee on Physics in Undergraduate Education
Date: Tuesday, July 16
Time: 10:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
Presider: Mark Reeves
DG01:
10:30-11 a.m. Reinventing the Introductory Physics
Laboratories for Future Biologists*
Invited – Wolfgang Losert, University of Maryland, IREAP, Paint Branch
Drive, Bldg. 223, College Park, MD 20742;
Kim Moore, John Giannini, University of Maryland
We have developed a set of laboratories and hands-on activities to ac-
company a new interdisciplinary physics course that has been success-
fully developed and tested in a small class of students at the University of
Maryland (UMD). With input from a large group of biologists, physicists,
chemists, and education researchers at UMD, we have designed a course to
be taken in the student’s second year, with calculus, biology, and chemistry
as prerequisites. This permits the laboratories to include significant content
on physics at cellular scales, from chemical interactions to random motion
and charge screening. We developed a lab that introduces the students to
modern equipment such as microfluidics and microscopy and phys-
ics analysis tools in contexts relevant to biology, while keeping it simple
enough to maintain the pedagogically valuable open-ended laboratory
structure.
*The laboratory development is part of the HHMI supported NEXUS project
DG02:
11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Laboratory Experiments for the Life
Sciences
Poster – Joel C. Berlinghieri, The Citadel, Physics Department, Grimsley Hall,
171 Moultrie St., Charleston, SC 29409;
Christina Leidel, Rene Hurka, The Citadel
Students majoring in biology and pre-medicine take a dedicated section of
introductory physics, both lecture and laboratory. Two of the experiments
performed in the laboratory are presented. The first experiment studies
mechanical advantage and measures the strength of materials. A modified
PASCO stress-strain apparatus is used to measure the forces experienced in
an analog of the arm. Tensile forces are measured in the analog of the bicep
tendon and compressional forces in the analog of the bone. Scaling and
its effect on fracture of these analogs are studied. The second experiment
measures pressures of a fluid during a pumping-rest cycle. A pump and
valve are used to cyclically pump fluid into a chamber that has a restric-
tive outlet of changeable size. The chamber wall is made of material of
varying flexibility. The pressure is recorded as a function of time through a
complete pump and rest cycle and compared as a function of wall flexibility
and outlet size.
