eNNOUNCER August 2017

 

AAPT News

2017 U.S. Physics Team Shines with Three Gold and Two Silver Medals

The United States Physics Team ranked eighth place out of 88 countries at the 48th International Physics Olympiad that was held in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, July 16-24, 2017 Read more

2017 AAPT Board of Directors Election

The election of officers for the AAPT Board of Directors will begin in September. Watch for the exact dates in next month's eNNOUNCER. Members will receive instructions through email or, if no email is on file, through the mail to help you vote electronically. Be sure your email address and membership are current so you can participate. Learn more about the candidates. Read more.

AAPT's new e-Commerce and Membership Portal

AAPT has launched a new e-Commerce/Membership portal. We would like to use this opportunity to remind everyone that usernames have been switched to primary email addresses and passwords are now case-sensitive. We also encourage users to visit their "MY Account" page to change their password after the initial logon. Read more.

2018 Winter Meeting Abstracts

AAPT will be accepting abstracts for the 2018 Winter Meeting in San Diego from August 2 to September 13, 2017. Please click here for more information and to submit your abstract.

2017 Summer Meeting Highlights

With more than 1100 attendees, the 2017 Summer Meeting can be viewed as a success. The 2017 Summer Meeting was held at the Cincinnati Marriott RiverCenter and Northern Kentucky Convention Center with workshops at University of Cincinnati. Read more.

AAPT Seeks Volunteer to Direct AAPT High School Contest

AAPT seeks a volunteer to apply for director of AAPT's high school US Physics Team. The U.S. Physics Team Academic Director position provides general oversight of the U.S. competition including recruiting and training team coaches, preparing and grading exams, training of the U.S. Physics Team during training camp, and traveling with the Team to the International Physics Olympiad. We anticipate that the individual selected will serve as co-director during the 2017-18 year and transition to director in Fall 2018. Click here for more information.

AAPT Career Center Offers FREE Postings

The AAPT Career Center offers FREE postings to employers recruiting seasonal interns. Locate the best fit for your organization by reaching the future of the science community - the AAPT membership, as well as the members and student members of the American Physical Society (APS Physics), AVS Science and Technology, and the Society of Physics Students and Sigma Pi Sigma.

Get the word out! Your posting will also appear on the Physics Today Jobs site, which when combined with the job sites of the organizations mentioned above forms the ultimate online science, engineering, and computing career network, ensuring maximum relevant visibility for your internship.

Visit jobs.aapt.org to get started.

PTRA Professional Development Activities

Physics Teaching Resource Agents (PTRAs) have been providing professional development to colleagues during the month of June. A short PTRA workshop on using TiPERS in the classroom was presented to New York teachers in conjunction with the Math for America program. Two week long PTRA workshops were presented to teachers in Utah; Astronomy topics were the focus for a workshop at Capital Reef National Monument; a variety of topics including Atomic Nature of Matter, Heat, Electricity, Light and Color were covered at the workshop at Brigham Young University. The workshops were offered through the Utah Science Teachers Association. Teachers in Wisconsin participated in a course at the University of Wisconsin River Falls. The course topics were Electromagnetic Forces and Interactions as well as electricity from the CASTLE curriculum. Elementary science specialists concentrated on integrating photosynthesis and energy to core science content areas in a week long course for the Baltimore City School District hosted by Katya Denisova at John Hopkins University.

There are still openings for physics instructors or teachers to register for a week-long workshop hosted by Tom O’Kuma at Lee College on quantum topics such as dark matter, GPS, photoelectric effect, and black holes. Registration site is www.aaptptra.com

If your institution is interested in providing professional development activities for teachers in your region you are encouraged to contact AAPT/PTRA Director Karen Jo Matsler karen@aaptptra.com or AAPT/PTRA Oversight Committee Chair Pat Callahan ptcallahan3537@gmail.com to discuss arrangements for having AAPT/PTRA workshops scheduled.

Flipping the Classroom - A Special AAPT Symposium at the GIREP/ICPE/EPEC Conference

A special AAPT symposium was held at the GIREP/ICPE/EPEC conference on July 4, 2017, at Dublin City University, Dubin, Ireland. Participants included Eric Mazur, Harvard University, mazur@physics.harvard.edu, "Flipping the Classroom and Never Looking Back",
Andrew Gavrin, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, agavrin@iupui.edu, "The Half-Flipped Classroom—Just-in-Time Teaching",
Mats Selen, University of Illinois, mats@illinois.edu, "Flipping Very Large Classes",
Ralf Widenhorn, Portland State University, ralfw@pdx.edu, "Engaging Pre-health Students in a Flipped Course by Using Authentic Medical Applications and Expert Pre-lectures".

Session Chair, David Sokoloff, University of Oregon, sokoloff@uoregon.edu
Abstract: There is ample research evidence to conclude that the lecture model of physics education is flawed. Education is a two-step process: (1) information transfer, and (2) making sense of and assimilating that information. Flipping the classroom transforms the process so that (1) largely takes place outside, before class, and classroom activities are designed for (2) to take place in class. New strategies have been developed for students’ at-home preparation, while various active learning and assessment strategies have dramatically changed the classroom environment. This symposium will explore the rationales for flipping the classroom, strategies for both at-home and in-class student work in a flipped classroom, and research on the effectiveness of flipped classroom environments.

To view this symposium use this link to YouTube.


 

AAPT Programs

2017 High School Physics Photo Contest

One of the fun opportunities during the AAPT Summer Meeting is reviewing and voting on the top 100 photos as selected by the Committee on Physics in High Schools under the direction of Tommi Holsenbeck. The votes have been tallied and the winning entries are posted. View here or list. Congratulations to the winning students and their teachers.

Natural
1st Place – The Balance of Nature, Kyle Douglas Willette
2nd Place - The Moving Rocks of Death Valley, Richard Zhou
3rd Place - Physics is Cool, Aerianna Beth Porter
Hon Mention - Antelope Canyon, Mark Daniel Gonzalez
Hon Mention - Cold Lakeside Morning, Daniel Yuezhou Li


Contrived
1st Place - Smile for the Camera!, Ryan Michael Brohm
2nd Place - Two Candles Spinning on a Lazy Susan, Alexander Kai-Feng Chan
3rd Place - Oobleck on a Speaker, Darren Seaney
Hon Mention - Spoons Reflecting a School Bus, Isabel Marie Lavrov
Hon Mention - A Shocking Faraday Cage, Steven Edward Angtuaco

The Frederick and Florence Bauder Endowment

The Frederick and Florence Bauder Endowment provides grants to support special activities in the area of physics teaching. The deadline for applications to request funds is December 1.


AAPT Membership

AAPT Member Spotlight

Moses Rifkin
University Prep
Seattle, Washington
Read more

AAPT Members Now Get 30% Discount on MIT Press Books!

Have you been meaning to check out Richard Feynman’s The Character of Physical Law or Noson Yanofsky’s The Outer Limits of Reason? Now you can do so at 70% of the cost that the general public pays! As an AAPT member, you are now entitled to a 30% discount on all Physics and Math titles at MIT Press.

To take advantage of this offer, contact us at membership@aapt.org to retrieve your discount code and start shopping at mitpress.mit.edu/physics. We hope this new feature of membership will benefit your brain and your wallet.

Call for Award Nominations

The AAPT Awards Committee invites nominations for all of AAPT awards, citations, and medals. We are particularly interested in nominations for AAPT Fellows and for the Homer L. Dodge Citation for Distinguished Service to AAPT.

Concerned about the Future of Science?

Stay informed with FYI: Science Policy News from AIP. Your membership with AAPT makes it possible for AIP to provide accurate, objective, and comprehensive updates on science policy and funding.

FYI has been a trusted source of science policy news for more than two decades. Readers learn about legislative and executive branch policy developments, agency appointments, and funding important to the physical sciences community. By staying informed about policy developments, we can better shape the future of science. Sign up for free at: aip.org/fyi

The Nuanced Universe: Letting Students Discovery Simple Models and Then Push Them to Their Limits

Tuesday, 29 August
8 PM ET (Washington, DC)

This webinar, hosted by Direct Measurement Video developers Peter Bohacek and Matt Vonk (serc.carleton.edu/dmvideos/index.html), will highlight video-base experiments from their new collection, Pivot Interactives (pivotinteractives.com). Many of the experiments let students discover the fundamental laws of physics, even for topics like Coulomb’s Law and Newton’s 2nd Law, that have traditionally been difficult to perform quantitatively. In many cases, the quality of the data that students collect is sufficient not only to establish canonical relationships (1/r^2 for example) but also to see second order deviations from the simple models! Guiding students through the process of figuring out the origin of these deviations is a great way to show science in action. Students can suggest possible explanations, devise additional experiments to rule-out incorrect explanations, and then carryout additional video-based experiments to solve the mystery.

Register for this webinar here


 

In the News

NASA Invites You to Become a Citizen Scientist During US Total Solar Eclipse

Learn how you can participate in a NASA experiment www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017

Undergraduate Computational Physics Workshop

October 7, 2017
John Carroll University, Cleveland, OH

This NSF-funded workshop is part of a project exploring novel, effective, and scalable ways to help faculty integrate computational physics into their undergraduate physics curricula. The workshop is a keystone of each yearlong local process we offer to support faculty to do this. Both novices and experts in using computation in physics courses are welcome. Click here for further information

APS NMC Bringing Emergency Aid to Mentees

The APS National Mentoring Community (NMC) will now offer funds to NMC Mentees who are facing financial emergencies. The NMC Bringing Emergency Aid to Mentees (BEAM) fund will provide up to $1,500 to NMC Mentees who find themselves facing an economic hardship that could prevent them from continuing their physics studies and earning their degree. For more information about fund eligibility and details, visit the NMC BEAM website.

Help students find the right grad program. Tell them about GradSchoolShopper.com

Advise your students to check out GradSchoolShopper.com, the most complete directory of graduate programs in the physical sciences. Students headed for graduate school can use this free service to search by degree programs, admission deadlines, research specialties, faculty profiles, GRE requirements, and more! If your program isn’t listed, contact us to find out how to have it included.

Highly Trained STEM Teachers Needed to Boost America's Global Competitiveness, According to New Study

The United States' global competitiveness is at risk as the nation confronts persistent shortages of STEM teachers. More than half of all high school physics teachers lacked certification in the discipline in 2012, for example. As a result, students who are interested in STEM careers find themselves ill prepared to compete in an increasingly highly technical workforce.

A new study by the American Physical Society, in collaboration with the American Chemical Society, Computing Research Association, and Mathematics Teacher Education Partnership, addresses the reasons why STEM students shy away from teaching as a career and offers ways to counter the trend. Download the full report at www.aps.org/policy/reports.

Workshop on Women and Minorities in the History of Physics, Role Models for Today

Dr. Greg Good, Director of the Center for the History of Physics, is eager to provide workshops at AAPT Section Meetings and elsewhere on Women and Minorities in the History of Physics. Teachers will be introduced to the teaching materials on the AIP website related to the history of women and minorities in the physical sciences. The purpose of these materials is to help students appreciate that not only white males have contributed to the development of physics, astronomy, and other physical sciences. On the flip side, there have been many more women than Marie Curie and many more African Americans than Benjamin Banneker and Jim Gates who have had successful careers in the physical sciences. We will explore several of the lesson plans in each group and explore games and other activities to bring these lessons to life. For more information, please contact Dr. Greg Good.

American Modeling Teachers Association

Modeling Instruction was developed for high school physics teachers and has since expanded to physical science, chemistry, biology, and middle school. Each year, Modeling workshops are held at universities and high schools across the United States. Last year, more than 70 Modeling workshops were offered to high school and middle school teachers in more than 20 states.

For information on 2017 Modeling Workshops, please visit the American Modeling Teachers Association (AMTA) website: modelinginstruction.org For questions: wendy@modelinginstruction.org or gheheman@asu.edu


 

Physics Careers

Jobs Announcements from the Career Center

Visiting Assistant Professor - Physics
Idaho State University
Click here for job description

Clinical Assistant Professor Master Teacher
FIUTeach
Click here for job description


 

More Physics Resources


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In this issue

AAPT News

AAPT Programs

AAPT Members

In the News

Physics Careers

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Featured Journal Articles

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The Hindenburg Disaster: Combining Physics and History in the Laboratory

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American Journal of Physics

 

Zeeman effect experiment with high-resolution spectroscopy for advanced physics laboratory

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