AAPT Section News, December 2013
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Tarini, Grand Valley State Univ.). Other talks by Rex
Taibu and Chaiphat Plybour (both from Western Michigan
Univ.) sparked lively discussion on teaching the concept of
“weight” and assessment of student learning of force and
motion. The meeting also included a roundtable discussion
by Michael LoPresto on best practices for teaching
astronomy.
At the business meeting in the afternoon, Les Latham
(Port Huron North HS) was elected as the new 2nd Vice
President. During the final breakout session, Brad Ambrose
(Grand Valley State Univ.) facilitated a workshop on
guided inquiry tutorials for teaching orbital mechanics. In
addition, there was the opportunity for a guided tour by
Dr. James Smith of HFCC’s renovated Science Building
and new South Wing, as well as a show presented by Steve
Murrell at HFCC’s Hammond Planetarium.
The Fall Meeting of MIAAPT is planned for Kirtland
Community College in Roscommon, MI for October 12th,
2013.
—Mike Faleski, Section Representative
North Carolina Section
The 18th Annual Spring Meeting of the North Carolina
Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers
was held April 19-20, 2013 at North Carolina State Uni-
versity in Raleigh, NC. Our local hosts were Bill Schmidt
(Meredith College) and Michael Paestler of (NCSU).
The meeting was organized as a tribute to John Hubisz.
The theme could have been “the history or the NCS-
AAPT” as John was a founding member of the Section
and its Secretary/Treasurer for numerous years. This focus
included a special panel discussion, “Science and Faith:
Mutual Enrichment,” in John’s honor. In addition, many
of the contributed talks fondly recalled John’s role in the
North Carolina Section including a talk by Chuck Stone,
who came from Colorado to honor John.
The Friday night banquet speaker was Dr. Bernard H.
Cochran, Ordained Baptist Minister, Professor Emeritus,
Department of Religion and Philosophy at Meredith Col-
lege. His talk, “Issues in Science and Religion,” described
the relationship between science and religion in regard to
the origin of the universe. On Saturday morning, Dr. John
Blondon (NCSU) gave an invited talk, “A New Spin on Su-
pernova Physics,” which described his continuing research
in computational astrophysics. There was also a student
research poster session with 13 posters and also three after-
noon workshops.
Luis Guadalupe of UNC Pembroke received the Best
Undergraduate Paper Award for the poster, “Using EJS to
Simulate a Frequency-Modulated Mechanically Driven Os-
cillator.” Eric Raymer of NCSU received the Best Gradu-
ate Student Award for the poster, “Testing the Stability of
Three-Dimensional Hoyle-Lyttleton Accretion.” Austin
Griffin of UNC Pembroke received the Best Pedagogical
Paper Award for the poster, “Obtaining Fourier Coefficients
of Selected Waveforms Using a PC Soundcard.”
The four John L. Hubisz Award winners (Mario Belloni, Chuck
Stone, John Hubisz, and Wolfgang Christian) were also in at-
tendance at the meeting. The John L. Hubisz Award honors Out-
standing Service to the Section.
The North Carolina Section Business Meeting was held
Saturday afternoon.
The 18th Annual Fall Meeting of the North Carolina Sec-
tion of the American Association of Physics Teachers was
held jointly with the South Atlantic Coast Section of AAPT
and Zone 5 of SPS on October 25-26, 2013 at Furman Uni-
versity in Greenville, SC. Our local host was David Moffett
of Furman University.
On Friday afternoon there was a Planetarium Show, fol-
lowed by a banquet with the keynote speaker Dr. Bryan
Baker from NIST. His talk, “Biomaterials in Tissue Engi-
neering: Shape Matters,” described his biophysics work on
human bone marrow stromal cells. On Saturday morning,
there were 30 contributed talks and 17 posters presented.
In the afternoon there were 3 workshops. There was also a
separate SPS program which focused on industrial physics
and careers post-graduation.
Helen Meskhidze of Elon University received the Best
Undergraduate Paper Award for the poster “Modeling the
