Spring 2024 Meeting of the Illinois Section of the AAPT

"The role of labs in physics education"

April 19-20, 2024
Department of Physics - Loomis Hall
University of Illinois
Urbana, Illinois 61801-3080

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We invite you to attend the Spring 2024 meeting of the ISAAPT. Come to learn more about physics, discover new tools and techniques for teaching physics, share your experiences via contributed presentations and Take Fives, and meet old and new friends.

REGISTER FOR THE MEETING

Dues, registration fees, and payments for meals may be paid online.
Orders for meals must be placed by Friday, April 12.

Full program (PDF)

Invited Speakers

Friday, April 19:

2:30-3:30 PM - "Quantum Tech is in Your Public Library" by Dr. Virginia Lorenz

Getting your hands on quantum hardware that uses entanglement is usually only possible if you have access to upper undergraduate laboratories or quantum research labs. We recently installed a publicly accessible quantum network in the Urbana Free Library that allows anyone to make measurements on entangled photons. The goal is to educate the public about the principles of quantum technology, engage them in research in quantum networks, and enable them to discover new applications for themselves. In this talk, I will present the technical and educational aspects of this work.

6:00 PM Banquet in the Siebel Center for Design

7:00-8:00 PM (Banquet speaker) - "Enhancing the Lab & Learning Experience Through Community Engagement" by  Dr. Joe Bradley, Director of Engineering Education & Entrepreneurship Carle Illinois College of Medicine

What makes labs fun – is it the hands-on experience; the opportunity to learn by seeking out an answer; the opportunity to be creative and to explore intellectual curiosity; of course, as well as many other reasons. In this talk, we will share some of our experiences using our design lab course as an opportunity for outreach in our local school district. Resnick (2007) argues that the “kindergarten approach to learning” is an ideal strategy for developing creative-thinking skills. Resnick (2007) suggests that this approach has the spiraling cycle of Imagine, Create, Play, Share, Reflect, then back to Imagine, starting the cycle again. We leverage this framework in our work with the local schools to create the learning experience for both our first-year students as well as the students in the school district. What we have learned from our engagement is that young children have some of the most intriguing insights and ask very thought-provoking questions that have challenged the students in the design course. Our goal in the lab is to relive the “kindergarten” experience when we enjoyed very few intellectual constraints – when we could do anything.

Saturday, April 20:

10:00-11:00 AM - “Messiness provides a key for rich laboratory classrooms“ by Dr. Katie Ansell 

The practice of doing science is inherently a complex and nonlinear process, but when we teach classroom laboratory activities it is necessary to adjust activities to make them doable for students. It can feel safest to get rid of the “messiness” to ensure that students reach canonical physics results. Yet when we do this, students lose the opportunity to learn about the nature of measurement, to respond to challenges, and to develop as proximal experts in the lab classroom environment. At the University of Illinois we have reformed our introductory laboratories with activities where students encounter and learn to navigate messiness. Through this process, students grow into resilient, resourceful, and reflective teammates and experimenters. In this talk I will discuss how such activities can be curated amongst the real constraints of time and frustration, and show some of the real and rich outcomes of such an approach.

Workshops

W1. Friday (10:00 AM - 12:00 PM) iOLab – a multi-sensor device for High School and College

by Jeremy Paschke, York High School - Location: 322 Loomis

The IOLab is a wireless data acquisition system of the same size and weight as a graphing calculator, and thus highly portable. It contains more than twenty sensors or inputs, including a 3D accelerometer, a 3D magnetometer, a 3D gyroscope, wheels which record position, velocity, and acceleration, a force probe, and both analog and digital inputs. Data can be analyzed in the IOLab software itself or can be exported to a csv file for later analysis.

In the workshop, the participants will work through lab activities (e.g., circular motion) developed by high school teachers in the Illinois Physics and Secondary Schools (IPaSS) Partnership program and labs used in the introductory physics courses at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

To make the IOLab experience more authentic, participants should bring their own computer or Chromebook to the workshop.

For more information on the iOLab, see http://www.iolab.science.

W2. Saturday (1:00-3:00 PM): iPaSS Labs by Jake Rangel - Location 222 Loomis

The Illinois Physics and Secondary Schools Partnership (IPaSS) Program, created by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, welcomes 10-15 physics teachers to join a cohort each year.  The program provides teachers with a class set of iOLab devices–a wireless lab system that contains dozens of sensors and supports quick data collection and analysis.  Teachers are also given a space to collaborate and develop lab activities for the physics classroom.

This presentation explores the student-driven inquiry-based labs that teachers have worked together to develop and implement in their physics courses.  Such activities covered in this workshop ask students to complete the following:

- Verify Newton’s Second Law using hanging masses and the iOLab device

- Calculate the unknown mass of your cell phone using the iOLab device

- Calculate the energy lost due to friction while the iOLab device rolls down a ramp.

In this workshop, participants will work through these labs and have time to explore the iOLab device.  These devices have transformed the way that teachers implement labs in their classrooms.

Full program is below. Note that all presentations (except banquet speaker) will be in 151 Loomis.

Host - Morten Lundsgaard, UIUC, mlundsga@illinois.edu