2012 Annual Report - page 12

12
AAPT
2012 Annual Report
1
Winter Meeting—
The Wave Nature of Light and Matter
February 4–8, 2012, Ontario, California
Statistics:
There were 805
a
ttendees, 30 Exhibitors, 61
Sessions, 1 tutorial, 31 workshops, 7 crackerbarrels, and
102 posters.
Gay Stewart, Program Committee Chair
Paper Sorters:
Janelle Bailey, University of Nevada - Las
Vegas, Paul Williams, Austin Community College, John
Griffith, Mesa Community College, David Sturm, University
of Maine, Gary White, AIP
Local organizer:
Dr. Mary Mogge, Cal Poly Pomona
University Physics Department
Plenaries
DreamWorks Studios “Waves in Animation”, Ron
Henderson
Symposium on Physics Education: Physics Education
Research and Public Policy, Howard J. Gobstein, Helen R.
Quinn, and Pat Heller with Noah finkelstein, moderator
Physics for Future Presidents: Inspiring the non-science
student by emphasizing issues of international importance,
Richard A. Muller
Awards
Richtmyer Memorial Lecture Award, Brian Greene,
Columbia University, New York City, NY.
Cosmology, Dark
Energy, and String Theory.
The John David Jackson Award for Excellence in Graduate
Physics Education, Kip Thorne, California Institute of
Technology, Pasadena, CA.
Black-Hole Research: A New
Golden Age.
Oersted Medal, Charles H. Holbrow, Massachusets Institute
of Technology, Cambridge, MA.
Making Physics Make
Sense—Narratives, Content, Witz
.
AAPT Distinguished Service Citations, Elizabeth Chesick,
Peter Hopkinson, Jan Tobochnik
Highlights
AAPT’s 2012 Winter Meeting was hosted by the Southern
California Section. The Meeting theme was “The Wave
Nature of Light & Matter.” Maxwell’s equations were
formalized 150 years ago, and this is the 75th anniversary
of the Davisson-Germer Nobel Prize. California is known
for its water waves, and fluid dynamics is an important area
in the beautiful animated movies we have come to enjoy
and associate with this region.
AAPT hosted the 3rdAnnual FunWalk/Run, a fundraiser
that supports our meetings and conferences. The Out-Laws
of Physics provided a fun evening of music. Attendees
also had a chance to take a tour of NASA’s Stratospheric
Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA).
The life and legacy of Len Jossem were honored during
an elegant reception and dinner. Jossem was one of the
prime international leaders in physics education. The net
proceeds from this event benefited the E. Leonard (Len)
Jossem International Education Fund.
Dr. RonHendersonofDreamWorksAnimationpresented
our first plenary talk. He developed physical simulation and
procedural modeling.
During the plenary session, Past President David Cook
introduced a new membership scholarship/award program,
the Hashim A. Yamani Fund. These awards are supported
by the Hashim A. Yamani Fund, which was endowed in
2011 by generous contributions from several colleagues and
mentees of Dr. Hashim A. Yamani, a prominent and well
respected physics educator, researcher, and public servant
in Saudi Arabia.
The annual Symposium on Physics Education featured
Helen Quinn, theoretical physicist and SLAC Professor
Emeritus who chaired the National Academy of Sciences
committee that issued “A Framework for K-12 Science
Education” about national standards.
Attendees had an opportunity to get involved in AAPT’s
efforts on Real World Problem Solving, the area of a recent
grant to which AAPT is a partner with Project Kaleidoscope.
In part, the FIPSE grant is to find ways to incorporate 21st
century, real world problems into the physics curriculum.
We introduced this with a crackerbarrel and a plenary talk
by “Physics for Future Presidents” author, Richard Muller,
well known author and professor of physics at the University
of California, Berkeley.
Other exciting plenary sessions featured our award
winners. Richtmyer Memorial Lecture Award winner Brian
Greene, well known author and professor of physics at
Columbia University. Oersted Medal recipient Charles H.
Holbrow’s talk was entitled “Making Physics Make Sense—
National Meetings
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