July 13–17, 2013
Monday morning
49
Session AE: Panel – Seeking
Employment in Academia
Location: Broadway III/IV
Sponsor: Committee on Graduate Education in Physics
Co-Sponsor: Committee on Professional Concerns
Date: Monday, July 15
Time: 8–10 a.m.
Presider: Frances Mateycik
Applying for a career in academia can be an art form. You have
to catch the eye of the employer based on a few pages of writ-
ten words. You must be able to interpret the ad, gather pertinent
information quickly, and tailor your materials to the position.
There are many questions such as how long, personal, specific, etc.
your materials should be. How should you tailor materials when
applying to a field-specific position versus a general announce-
ment? What do small private schools look for that large public
universities are not interested in? This session features a panel
of experts that will provide their opinions on how to adjust your
materials to positions at their type of school.
Panelists:
Keith Clay – Green River Community College
Dyan Jones – Mercyhurst College
Tatiana Krivosheev – Clayton State University
Dean Zollman – Kansas State University
Session AF: Modern Physics in the
High School Classroom
Location: Galleria II
Sponsor: Committee on Physics in High Schools
Date: Monday, July 15
Time: 8–9:40 a.m.
Presider: Kenneth Cecire
AF01:
8-8:30 a.m. Exploring Elementary Particles with
Masterclasses and e-Labs
Invited – Shane Wood, Irondale High School, 3439 Garfield Ave., Apt 104,
Minneapolis, MN 55408;
What is the Higgs boson? What is antimatter? What is the Large Hadron
Collider? These questions are in popular culture to the point where even
many non-physics students are asking them. How can we take advantage
of this historic opportunity to engage more students in the exciting field of
physics? The international particle physics masterclass is designed for high
school students to analyze LHC experimental data to better understand
the world of quarks and leptons. Learn how teachers and students have the
opportunity to work directly with particle physics data and to collaborate
with physicists and other students doing similar work across the country
and around the world. They need not stop there: with a classroom cosmic
ray detector and an accompanying e-Lab, students can take their own data
and share data and analyses worldwide.
AF02:
8:30-9 a.m. Activities from QuarkNet’s Data Portfolio
Invited – Kris Whelan University of Washington, Box 351560, Seattle, WA
98195-1560;
You may not have the expensive instrumentation for modern physics
experiments in your classroom, but your students can analyze date from
these experiments. QuarkNet is developing a portfolio containing instruc-
tional resources and data from the Large Hadron Collider, LHC, experi-
ments and cosmic ray studies. Students build on what they are learning in
their physics classes, especially conservation of momentum and energy,
to develop new conceptual constructs. The portfolio contains fundamen-
tal (paper and pencil) data analyses and more challenging, online ones
as well. We will explore these fundamental activities. Funded by the Na-
tional Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy, QuarkNet is a
long-term, national teacher development program that brings high school
teachers and their students into the particle physics research community.
AF03:
9-9:10 a.m. Hands-on Simulations for Modern
Physics with Video Supplements
Contributed – Beverly T. Cannon, Highland Park High School, 4220 Emer-
son Ave., Dallas, TX 75214;
Modern Physics can be a puzzlement in a “hands-on” environment. There
are some activities that fall into the simulation genre that can be done and
that work without computers. Calculators and computers can be used to
analyze the data obtained. This presentation will have at least five that you
can use in a high school class.
AF04:
9:10-9:20 a.m. Reaching Modern Physics in an
Inquiry-based Physics-First Curriculum
Contributed – Richard G. Piccioni, The Bay School of San Francisco, 35
Keyes Ave., San Francisco, CA 94129;
To prepare students for chemistry, physics-first curricula should
introduce some key aspects of modern physics. Maximizing student op-
portunities to construct durable understandings of concepts such as the
photon model of light requires carefully structured group work, creative
use of technology, and courageous deferral of some material traditionally
“covered” in introductory physics courses. The 9th-grade inquiry-based
physics-first curriculum at our school now takes the form of a series
of investigations conducted by students in small groups.
1
Early in the
course, students encounter a comprehensive conservation of energy
equation along the lines recommended by Jewett
2
and learn to apply
that equation under more than one system definition. By the end of the
course, application of energy conservation principles to simple electric
circuits enables students to estimate the average photon energy of an
LED in electron-volts, paving the way to a deeper appreciation of atomic
energy levels in chemistry.
1. R.G. Piccioni, N. Fiszman, “Physics First at the Bay School,” submitted to
The
Physics Front
(February, 2013).
2. J. W. Jewett, “Energy and the confused student IV: A Global Approach to Energy,”
Phys. Teach
.
46
, 210-217 (April 2008).
AF05:
9:20-9:30 a.m. Students’ Videoconference to
Compare their LHC Particle Event Analyses
Contributed – Dave Trapp, SequimScience.com & QuarkNet,192 Quail’s
Roost Road, Sequim, WA 98382;
The U.S. Masterclass, part of the International Masterclass program,
engages students to analyze recent high-energy collision data from the
LHC including possible Higgs events. Students share, compare, and dis-
cuss their analyses via videoconference with physicists and other groups
of students around the U.S. and often other countries in the Americas,
Europe, and around the Pacific rim. By encouraging students to emulate
the processes physicists use, it helps them understand what is science and
what it has and can accomplish. This talk will discuss the details of these
video conferences, their features and their success.
AF06:
9:30-9:40 a.m. Using the CMS e-Lab with High School
Students
Contributed – Michael Fetsko, Mills Godwin High School, 2101 Pump Road,
Henrico, VA 23238;
This talk will highlight my experiences using the CMS e-Lab with my
high school students and with high school students in Beijing, China.
The CMS e-Lab is an online tool that provides authentic data from the
CMS detector at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. The CMS e-Lab provides
