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arXiv2023

Novel Approaches to Solve Simple Harmonic Motion

This paper presents two novel approaches to solve the classic simple harmonic motion. In one approach, the distance between the equilibrium position and the maximal displacement is divided into N equal segments. In each segment, the mass moves with constant acceleration under the average of two forces at the ends of the segment. Summing up the time covering each segment and taking the large-N limit reproduce one quarter of the period for simple harmonic motion. In the other approach, the time moving from the maximal displacement to the equilibrium position is divided into N equal intervals. A recurrence relation for the displacement is obtained. The large-N limit of its solution results in the same solution as that obtained from solving differential equation.

physics.class-ph↗

arXiv2022

Teaching Philosophy and Science of Space Exploration (PoSE)

Capitalizing on the enthusiasm about space science in the general public, our goal as an interdisciplinary group of scholars is to design and teach a new team-taught interdisciplinary course, "Philosophy and Science of Space Exploration (PoSE)" at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) where we currently teach. We believe that this course will not only help overcome disciplinary silos to advance our understanding of space and critically examine its ethical ramifications, but also will better educate the public on how science works and help overcome the science skepticism that has unfortunately become more prominent in recent years. In what follows, we first juxtapose two seemingly contradictory trends: increased interest in space science on the one hand and increased skepticism about and distrust in science on the other. We then turn to how our anticipated Philosophy and Science of Space Exploration (PoSE) course will develop tools that could dismantle distrust in science while also enhancing the scientific and philosophical understandings of space science. We explain the content and the questions we will examine in POSE and conclude with how we will measure our success and progress.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2022

Percent Grade Scale Amplifies Racial/Ethnic Inequities in Introductory Physics

In previous work we analyzed databases for 95 classes to show that the percent grade scale was correlated with a much higher student fail rate than the 4.0 grade scale. This paper builds on this work and investigates equity gaps occurring under both scales. By employing a "Course Deficit Model" we attribute the responsibility for closing the gaps to those who are responsible for the policies that guide the course. When comparing course grades in classes graded using the percent scale with those in courses graded using the 4.0 scale, we find that students identifying as belonging to racial or ethnic minorities underrepresented in physics suffer a grade penalty under both grade scales but suffer an extra penalty under percent scale graded courses. We then use the fraction of A grades each student earns on individual exam items as a proxy for the instructor's perception of each student's understanding of the course material to control for student understanding and find that the extra grade penalty students from groups underrepresented in physics students suffer under percent scale grading is independent of the student's understanding of physics. When we control for more student level variables to determine the source of the grade scale dependent penalty, we find that it is primarily the low F grades (partial credit scores) on exam problems that are the source of these inequities. We present an argument that switching from percent scale grading to a 4.0 grade scale (or similar grades scale) could reduce equity gaps by 20-25\% without making any other course changes or controlling for any incoming differences between students.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2022

Physicality, Modeling and Making in a Computational Physics Class

Computation is intertwined with essentially all aspects of physics research and is invaluable for physicists' careers. Despite its disciplinary importance, integration of computation into physics education remains a challenge and, moreover, has tended to be constructed narrowly as a route to solving physics problems. Here, we broaden Physics Education Research's conception of computation by constructing an epistemic \emph{metamodel} -- a model of modeling -- incorporating insights on computational modeling from the philosophy of science and prior work. The metamodel is formulated in terms of practices, things physicists do, and how these inform one another. We operationalize this metamodel in an educational environment that incorporates making, the creation of shared physical and digital artifacts, intended to promote students' agency, creativity and self-expression alongside doing physics. We present a content analysis of student work from initial implementations of this approach to illustrate the very complex epistemic maneuvers students make as they engaged in computational modeling. We demonstrate how our metamodel can be used to understand student practices, and conclude with implications of the metamodel for instruction and future research.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2023

Accessibility in High Energy Physics: Lessons from the Snowmass Process

Accessibility to participation in the high energy physics community can be impeded by many barriers. These barriers must be acknowledged and addressed to make access more equitable in the future. An accessibility survey, the Snowmass Summer Study attendance survey, and an improved accessibility survey were sent to the Snowmass2021 community. This paper will summarize and present the barriers that prevent people from participating in the Snowmass2021 process,recommendations for the various barriers, and discussions of resources and funding needed to enact these recommendations, based on the results of all three surveys, along with personal experiences of the community members.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2022

The Necessity of International Particle Physics Opportunities for American Education

This Snowmass2021 Contributed Paper addresses the role of the Particle Physics community in creating and fostering international connections in American education. It describes the pressing need to introduce students and faculty to the challenges and rewards of international collaboration, not only to develop the next generation of scientists and engineers for particle physics, but to maintain and build U.S. leadership on an increasingly competitive world stage. We present and assess current efforts in education and public engagement with an eye toward identifying those activities in need of change or increased resources to improve audience reach and program efficacy. We also consider possible new activities that might improve upon or complement existing programs, with the common goal of providing all U.S. students with the opportunity to benefit from a quality international scientific experience.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2022

Informal Socialization in Physics Training

This paper addresses issues related to the process of informal socialization into physics, particularly for senior graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. Many physicists' careers are built on the relationships they have and develop during these critical years.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2022

How to Read the Snowmass White Papers on Power Dynamics in Physics, Informal Socialization in Physics Training, and Policing and Gatekeeping in STEM

The Community Engagement Frontier presents this set of three white papers, as part of Snowmass 2021. These papers address critical issues -- Power Dynamics in Physics, Informal Socialization in Physics Training, and Policing and Gatekeeping in STEM -- that make significant impacts on the experiences of the people who work in and learn particle physics. In this introductory document, we present crosscutting concepts that appear in each paper, and some advice on how to manage readers' responses to the contents. We expect that you will learn something new here. We hope that whatever you encounter, you will be energized to increase justice in this discipline we all love.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2022

Enhancing HEP research in predominantly undergraduate institutions and community colleges

The long-term success of HEP lies in expanding inclusiveness beyond national labs and academic research institutions to a vast community of predominantly undergraduate institutions (PUI) and community colleges (CC). Institutions such as PUIs and CCs offer an early starting point in the pipeline that can mitigate issues of lack of diversity and underrepresented participation of different groups in HEP. However, there are many underlying systemic, structural, and cultural challenges that need to be addressed collectively. Experimental collaborations are largely populated by national labs and research-focused academic institutions (non-PUIs). The faculty at PUIs and CCs have a high teaching load that is detrimental to their research participation. In addition, there is a lack of guidance, access, and tough competition for securing research funding. The students also suffer from a lack of research infrastructure and technical equipment that can only be found at national labs and larger universities. There are existing successful efforts to enhance the HEP research experience of students and faculty members. This paper discusses ways to leverage these to provide more research opportunities and establish a sustainable national program targeting specifically the issues faced by communities at PUIs and CCs. The need for research mentoring and skill building for faculty members is also laid out. The changes discussed in this paper would make a direct impact on the current spectrum of challenges.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2022

Facilitating Non-HEP Career Transition

About two-third of Physics PhDs establish careers outside of academia and the national laboratories in areas like Software, Instrumentation, Data Science, Finance, Healthcare, Journalism, Public Policy and Non-Governmental Organization. Skills and knowledge developed during HEPA (High Energy Physics and Astrophysics) research as an undergraduate, graduate or a postdoc level (collectively called early career) have been long sought after in industry. These skills are complex problem solving abilities, software programming, data analysis, math, statistics and scientific writing, to name a few. Given that a vast majority transition to the industry jobs, existing paths for such transition should be strengthened and new ways of facilitating it be identified and developed. A strong engagement between HEPA and its alumni would be a pre-requisite for this. It might also lead to creative ways to reverse the "brain drain" by encouraging alumni to collaborate on HEPA research projects or possibly come back full time to research. We motivate and discuss below several actionable recommendations by which HEPA institutions as well as HEPA faculty mentors can strengthen both ability to identify non-HEP career opportunities for students and post-docs as well as help more fully develop skills such as effective networking, resume building, project management, risk assessment, budget planning, to name a few. This will help prepare early career HEPA scientists for successfully transitioning from academia to the diverse array of non-traditional careers available. HEPA alumni can play a pivotal role by engaging in this process.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2022

Activity Report of the Second African Conference on Fundamental and Applied Physics, ACP2021

The African School of Fundamental Physics and Applications, also known as the African School of Physics (ASP), was initiated in 2010, as a three-week biennial event, to offer additional training in fundamental and applied physics to African students with a minimum of three-year university education. Since its inception, ASP has grown to be much more than a school. ASP has become a series of activities and events with directed ethos towards physics as an engine for development in Africa. One such activity of ASP is the African Conference on Fundamental and Applied Physics (ACP). The first edition of ACP took place during the 2018 edition of ASP at the University of Namibia in Windhoek. In this paper, we report on the second edition of ACP, organized on March 7--11, 2022, as a virtual event.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2022

Transforming U.S. Particle Physics Education: A Snowmass 2021 Study

The pursuit of knowledge in particle physics requires constant learning. As new tools become available, new theories are developed, and physicists search for new answers with ever-evolving methods. However, it is the case that formal educational systems serve as the primary training grounds for particle physicists. Graduate school (and undergraduate school to a lesser extent) is where researchers learn most of the technical skills required for research, develop scientific problem-solving abilities, learn how to establish themselves in their field, and begin developing their career. It is unfortunate, then, that the skills gained by physicists during their formal education are often mismatched with the skills actually required for a successful career in physics. We performed a survey of the U.S. particle physics community to determine the missing elements of graduate and undergraduate education and to gauge how to bridge these gaps. In this contributed paper, part of the 2021-22 Snowmass Community Planning Exercise, we report the results of this survey. We also recommend several specific community actions to improve the quality of particle physics education; the "community" here refers to physics departments, national labs, professional societies, funding agencies, and individual physicists.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2022

Preparation for future active learning

It is well documented that students sometimes resist active learning techniques. A recent study showed how students believed that they learned less in active learning classrooms than they learned in lectures, even though they learned more. In this article, we describe a method for introducing active learning methods to college students that is based on a preparation for future learning approach. The students who received this introduction to active learning appeared to be more receptive to group work in the classroom than students who started the course with an explanation of the reasons and values of active learning.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2022

Using Glowscript to Teach Numerical Modeling in Undergraduate Biology Education

Mathematical and numerical modeling is an increasingly important, yet often neglected, topic for biology students. We have found Glowscript to facilitate teaching and introducing computer simulations to students. In particular, the built-in the graphics and graphing capabilities can provide students with immediate feedback. Glowscript is a web-based form of visual Python that runs in a standard browser, and students can easily embed their simulations in external websites. Here we show various examples of how Glowscript is implemented in an undergraduate computational biology course. We hope these examples inspire others to adopt Glowscript in their science classrooms.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2022

Making expert processes visible: how and why theorists use assumptions and analogies in their research

Understanding how physicists solve problems can guide the development of methods that help students learn and improve at solving complex problems. Leveraging the framework of cognitive task analysis, we conducted semi-structured interviews with theoretical physicists (N=11) to gain insight into the cognitive processes and skills that they use in their professional research. Among numerous activities that theorists described, here we elucidate two activities that theorists commonly characterized as being integral to their work: making assumptions and using analogies. Theorists described making assumptions throughout their research process, especially while setting their project's direction and goals, establishing their model's interaction with mathematics, and revising their model while troubleshooting. They described how assumptions about their model informed their mathematical decision making, as well as instances where mathematical steps fed back into their model's applicability. We found that theorists used analogies to generate new project ideas as well as overcome conceptual challenges. Theorists deliberately sought out or constructed analogies, indicating this is a skill students can practice. When mapping knowledge from one system to another, theorists used systems that shared a high degree of mathematical similarity; however, these systems did not always share similar surface features. We conclude by discussing connections between the ways theorists use assumption and analogy and offering potential new avenues of research regarding applications to instruction.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2022

Computing the gravitational acceleration withing the World Pendulum Alliance: an application of the remote laboratory methodology implemented by UNAD

In this paper, we calculate the gravitational acceleration by using simple pendulums within the designated World Pendulum Alliance: a network constituted by fourteen institutions in eight countries, each provided by a pendulum that can be accessed remotely via the Internet. As a pedagogical option for remote laboratory experiences, we show how to access them and measure the pendulum's period for $N$ oscillations. We discuss the role of the repetitions and samples to minimize the experimental uncertainty, and by using the averaged value of the period, we compute the gravitational acceleration locally. Also, we present the corrections due to the moment of inertia of the system. Finally, by taking into account the geographical location of each pendulum, we report gravity's dependence on latitude, longitude, and altitude by discussing the implications on the Earth's shape. We hope this tool will be helpful for introductory and university physics courses due to its remote access features and its relation to fundamental concepts.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2022

Teaching computational thinking to space science students

Computational thinking is a key skill for space science graduates, who must apply advanced problem-solving skills to model complex systems, analyse big data sets, and develop control software for mission-critical space systems. We describe our work using Design Thinking to understand the challenges that students face in learning these skills. In the MSc Space Science & Technology at University College Dublin, we have used insights from this process to develop new teaching strategies, including improved assessment rubrics, supported by workshops promoting collaborative programming techniques. We argue that postgraduate level space science courses play a valuable role in developing more advanced computational skills in early-career space scientists.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2022

Development and validation of the Converging Lenses Concept Inventory for middle school physics education

Optics is a core field in the curricula of secondary physics education. In this study, we present the development and validation of a test instrument in the field of optics, the Converging Lenses Concept Inventory (CLCI). It can be used as a formative or a summative assessment of middle school students' conceptual understanding of image formation by converging lenses. The CLCI assesses: (1) the overall understanding of fundamental concepts related to converging lenses, (2) the understanding of specific concepts, and (3) students' propensity for difficulties within this topic. The initial CLCI consists of 16 multiple-choice items; however, one item was removed based on various quality checks. We validated the CLCI thoroughly with distractor analyses, classical test theory, item response theory, structural analyses, and analyses of students' total scores at different measurement points as quantitative approaches, as well as student interviews and an expert survey as qualitative approaches. The quantitative analyses are mostly based on a dataset of N = 318 middle school students who took the CLCI as a posttest. The student interviews were conducted with seven middle school students after they were taught the concepts of converging lenses. The expert survey included five experts who evaluated both individual items and the test as a whole. The analyses showed good to excellent results for the test instrument, corroborating the 15-item CLCI's validity and its compliance with the three foci outlined above.

physics.ed-ph↗