You Might Get $50 Had You Read This Professor's Syllabus

The amusing story going around right now is the report on CNN about a professor hiding an information about how a student could get $50 if he/she read his course's syllabus and found the instruction on where to find the money. At the end of the semester, when the professor went back to the money's location, the $50 was still there!

The hint read: "Thus (free to the first who claims; locker one hundred forty-seven; combination fifteen, twenty-five, thirty-five), students may be ineligible to make up classes and ..."

 

This would have led students to a locker that contained a $50 bill, free to the first student to claim it.

 

But at the end of the semester, when he went to check the locker, the bill was still there.

 

Frankly, I'm not surprised (is anyone surprised by this?). I've always assumed that students do not read the syllabus given to them at the beginning of the semester. This is why (i) I go over the syllabus on the first day of class where I point out the important parts of it, and (ii) my first quiz of the semester requires that they find the answer from the syllabus itself (i.e. "What date is Exam 2?").

I put out a very detailed syllabus. Major parts of it are dictated and required by the school. But other  parts include important requirement on what they students must do. I also include a detailed calendar of when topics or chapters of the text will be covered, what are due each week, and when the exams are scheduled. Basically the entire semester has been laid out at the beginning. I find this to be extremely useful after we went remote, because it became very clear on what tasks and assignments the students have to complete each week and when they are due. They did not have to contact me for most of the questions they had about the course.

However, it isn't unusual for me to still get, in the middle of the semester, students asking when the next exam will be held, what is the weight given to homework, etc.. etc., all information that the students can find in the syllabus. I often tell them that these are all information that they could find in the syllabus, and only then do I give them the answers.

Now, to be fair to the students, because of all the stuff we have to include in the syllabus, it has gotten rather long. With the course scheduled and the course learning outcome and student learning outcome all included, my syllabus for this Fall 2021 is 13 pages long. I can certainly understand if a student just does not have the patience to read every minute detail of the document, which is why I spend that first class of the semester going over the important highlights that they must know or be aware of. I can certainly see why this professor got his $50 back if the information is buried somewhere in the many pages of information. But then again, he could also have buried it in between some very pertinent piece of information.

If you are a student, the moral of the story here is that, no matter how tedious and unimportant it seems, just spend some time readying the syllabus. It gives you an important overview of the course, and maybe even what the instructor expects out of you. Who knows, you might be lucky enough to find some lunch money!

Zz.

Transition to Online Teaching

The June 2020 issue of Physics Today has an article on various physics instructors' effort in dealing with the migration to online teaching in physics courses. I notice a few similar issues I had to deal with, such as this:

During in-person lectures, says Greco, the instructor would pose a question every 10 minutes or so. The students would discuss the question with their neighbors for a few minutes and then submit their answers. “If most of them get the right answer, I move on,” says Greco. “If not, I adjust the live lecture.” That doesn’t work as well online: Student discussion is harder to facilitate and web-based interactions are much slower. In person, he adds, “you can tell if someone is paying attention, but that’s hard to do virtually.”

I use "clickers" in class to do a quick snapshot if the students understood the concept that was presented. And certainly, student-to-student discussion is a part of it especially if the first round of in-class question didn't produce a correct response. This can't be done during a Zoom session even though it has a Poll feature. Student discussion was almost non-existent, and we had to revert back to almost passive learning, which killed me since I'm a strong advocate for active learning.

I did resorted to giving them at-home projects as part of the material where they used simulations and virtual experiments to investigate something that was relevant to the topic of that week. But it isn't the same, obviously.

The other similar thing that I read was this:

Other instructors chose to teach asynchronously, sometimes in a flipped mode, with students watching lectures before attending virtual discussions. Some instructors, including Dubson, embed questions in their video lectures such that students can’t continue until they commit to an answer. “This allows us to require that they think,” he says.

Luckily, all my classes have these "pre-lecture" videos or documents that the students had to view or read, and then answer a few questions. These were meant to introduce to them the concepts related to the topic of that week before the come to class. So I was already doing the "flipped" mode. When we went totally remote, I expanded the pre-lecture videos and material so that the students had a bit more to view because now it became a major source of the material.

It's nice to read that many other instructors were doing the same thing, and that we could all learn from one another on how to do this better next time.

Zz.

US No Longer Attracts The Best Physics Minds

So much for making America great again.

Ethan Siegel summarizes the recent data on the severe drop in the number of international students seeking advanced physics degree in the US, and the drop in the number of applicants to US schools.

You need to read the article and the history of US advancement in physics, and science in general, to realize why this is a troubling trend. Whether you realize it or not, what you are enjoying now is the result of many such immigrants who came to the US and made extraordinary discoveries and contribution to science. This may no longer be true soon enough.

Yet, according to the American Physical Society, the past year has seen an alarming, unprecedented drop in the number of international applications to physics PhD programs in the United States. In an extremely large survey of 49 of the largest physics departments in the country, representing 41% of all enrolled physics graduate students in the United States, an overall decrease of almost 12% in the number of international applicants was observed from 2017 to 2018.

Graduate students in physics, if you are not aware of it, are the workhorse in advanced physics research. While senior researchers often think of the project, find the funding, and form the group, it is the graduate students and postdoc that often are the ones doing the actual work and executing the plan. And many of us not only rely on their skills and knowledge, but also their creativity in solving the myriads of problems that we often did not anticipate during the research work.

Without graduate students, many research programs would either come to a halt, or will be severely impacted. Period!

And the reality here is that the overwhelming majority of US institutions, both universities and US National Labs, have come to depend on a lot of international graduate students for these research projects. The ability to attract not just the best talent in the US, but also the best talent from all over the world, was a luxury that was the envy of many other countries. But that is no longer the case now, and the gloomy prediction of the beginning of the decline isn't that outrageous.

We find ourselves, today, at the very beginning of what could be the end of America's greatness in the realm of scientific research and education. Science has always been touted as the great equalizer: the scientific truths underlying our Universe know no borders and do not discriminate based on race, gender, or religion. We still have time to reverse this trend, and to welcome the brightest minds the world has to offer into our country.

But if we fail to do so, that intellectual capital will thrive elsewhere, leaving America behind. If we do not change course, "America First" will be the downfall of scientific greatness in our country.

I said as much way back in 2012 when I started noticing for the first time of many established Chinese researchers and college professors starting to migrate back to China and to Chinese institutions, something that was unheard of several years before. So now, compounding the budget constraints, we now have clear data on US no longer attracting as many international students as before.

There are no "greatness" in any of these here.

Zz.

Looking for Psychics To Teach Physics

I know, I know, this is trivial, but it is so hysterically funny!

Someone pointed this out to me and I couldn't stop giggling. So of course I have to share it with all of you! This is a jobs ad from Kennedy-King College, one of the City Colleges of Chicago. They are looking for someone to be an adjunct physics faculty member to, presumably, teach physics.

I'm doing a screen capture here, because I expect someone there will see this and make corrections to it soon... or maybe not!

I am guessing that two different people did this, because the category for the job is correct (circled in green), and the required qualification is also spelled correctly, but then it goes hysterically wrong in the job description. It says:

ADJUNCT FACULTY PSYCHICS/ PART-TIME

CITY COLLEGES OF CHICAGO, KENNEDY-KING COLLEGE

Kennedy-King College is currently seeking a part-time Faculty to teach Psychics during the Fall  2018 semester. 

Well of course they're looking for Psychics. This is because they want a part-time Faculty to teach it during this upcoming Fall semester!

Dear Kennedy-King College, you may want to have someone proof-read your ad. The spell-check would not have flagged you for this hilarious error. And for an academic institution, this is an embarrassing boo-boo. Having psychics to teach physics is like having heretics coming in to teach Sunday School.

Zz.

Physics Departments Without A Single Female Faculty Member

Before we start, let me emphasize that I'm a man, but I've been involved in promoting women participation in science, and especially physics, for years. Anyone who has followed this blog would have read several items on this issue, and also my activities in this area to promote women in science. I definitely think that there is an under-representation of women in physics, and one of the ways to improve that is to make the field more enticing and more familiar to them, both in terms of the subject matter, and the working condition.

Now, having said that, you know what's coming next is not going to be pretty. This is a news article that reports on a recent statistical analysis/modeling done by the American Institute of Physics. It aimed to address that fact that fully 1/3 of the physics departments here in the US do not have a single female faculty member. But one shouldn't stop there, because the statistics included schools with small number of faculty members (often less than 10), and these tend to be the schools that do not have any female faculty members.

The AIP ran a simulation that takes into account the number of available female faculty members and the available positions, and came out with the conclusion that the lack of female faculty members in these departments is consistent with the statistical distribution, and not due to any inherent bias.

A new report from the American Institute of Physics -- based on simulation analysis -- concludes that the large number of departments without a single woman is to be expected and is not the result of discrimination. Some experts on women and science, however, disagree.

The institute's report says that there are two factors that explain the distribution of women among departments: the size of departments and the total number of female faculty members available. There are many departments with only two or three physics faculty members, the report notes. So "it is unlikely that these departments will have a woman among the faculty because the overall representation of women among all physics faculty members is low," the report adds.

To put it simply, say that you have 100 balls. On the table, you have many compartments of various sizes, some able to contain 20 balls, while others are big enough to have only 2 balls. If you toss those 100 balls up in the air and let them land randomly into those compartments, the argument here says that naturally, the smaller compartments will have a higher probability to end up with having NO balls.

Whether one buys into the parameters set up for the simulation is another matter. But taken at face value, I don't see anything wrong with this. It is certainly a first attempt at trying to figure out if the lack of any female faculty members in these small departments are due to some inherent bias, or simply out of statistics. It is a scientifically valid methodology to START and investigate an issue. Now the next logical step is to re-examine if the parameters used are valid, or accurate. Maybe some of the assumptions used are debatable, etc., and thus, the simulation should be tweaked.

What annoys me is the response being given to this study. I certainly expect disagreement with the conclusion, but the counter-argument that has been given is purely speculative!

Janet Bandows Koster, executive director and CEO of the Association for Women in Science, said via e-mail that the report "a disappointment."

She urged physicists to study the concept of "implicit bias," which she said might have something to do with the pool of women in the discipline. "We know that most people are reluctant to accept that they are biased, and scientists in particular pride themselves on their impartiality. Yet scientists are humans raised in societies, and thus are subject to collective messages that suggest men are suited to science because they are independent and analytical whereas women are better suited to care-giving and cooperative enterprises."

It's too easy, she said, to focus only on the relatively small number of women in the field. "Inferring there is no hiring bias because the 'n' is so small for female faculty is essentially like granting a papal indulgence to physics departments across the country," she said.

I'm sorry, but that is stupid! You are countering a statistical analysis with nothing more than a speculative fishing expedition! That's like saying you don't agree with Special Relativity because you don't like the look of the equation!

And no one here is saying that there is no hiring bias. A statistical analysis such as this can't come to such conclusion. What it does say is that the lack of female faculty members in 1/3 of the physics depts. cannot be attributed to gender bias as the main factor, because statistical analysis alone can account for that observation! As scientists, we need to know what statistics say, and what they don't!

The PROPER way to counter something like this is to look at the validity of the parameter used, to see if the model is accurate, and to show where it might have missed something, NOT to simply insinuate that there are biases. For someone who is supposed to represent an association of women in SCIENCE, she sure used a lot of hand-waving, unsupported argument to counter a scientifically-derived conclusion.

Zz.

Online Physics Degree? Degree From "For-Profit" Universities?

I get these questions surprisingly often. And to make it less confusing, I'm splitting this topic into two separate parts, because the issues here are a bit different. But in the end, I'd like to hear if you either have gone through the same process, or have dealt with students who went through that process.

The first part is the question on getting a physics B.Sc degree predominantly via remote learning. Certainly, with the internet and advances in web-based learning, this question is bound to prop up. I know that many schools have started to offer various courses that one can take entirely either off the web, or via some remote means. This is certainly helpful for students who can't make the long commute, or for continuing education students who are already working, but want to obtain either more knowledge/expertise, or pursuing higher degree. But I don't know of any program (at least, here in the US) where a student can obtain a B.Sc in physics entirely via remote learning. And in the remote chance that such a program actually exists, I would really question that, because to me, an undergraduate physics program must include laboratory work, and often, more than just a few of them. One can't do "physics lab work" remotely and get the same experience.

So, do you know of such a program or have you encounter a student that went through such a program? I haven't, and certainly not those that I know of who enrolled in physics graduate programs.

The other question is regarding "for-profit" universities, such as University of Phoenix, DeVry, etc..(I'm not including diploma mills that produce worthless degrees here.) I've looked at many of these schools, and not surprisingly, most do not offer a B.Sc degree in physics. I'm guessing that there are just not enough of a demand for such a major at these institutions. Thus, it certainly is expected that we don't encounter physics graduates from such schools. Still, do you know of anyone graduating from such schools and are either working, or enrolling in a physics graduate program? I do not know of the quality of physics education in such institutions and wonder if they are producing students that are on par with other "regular" schools.

A lot of people who asked me whether they can get a physics degree via these routes can't seem to point to me examples of others who have. So from my perspective, this is untested waters, and I have zero ability to make any kind of recommendations for something that I haven't seen to have occurred.

Zz.

Persistence and Uncertainty in the Academic Career

I did only a quick browse of this paper (a lot of statistical analysis which I don't quite get). The abstract was .... "abstract" enough that I dove into the paper and looked for some main points that the authors was trying to make. One point that I got was in the conclusion/discussion of the paper:

An ongoing debate involving academics, university administration, and educational policy makers concerns the de nition of professorship and the case for lifetime tenure, as changes in the economics of university growth have now placed tenure under the review process [3, 6]. Critics of tenure argue that tenure places too much financial risk burden on the modern competitive research university and diminishes the ability to adapt to shifting economic, employment, and scientifi c markets. To address these changes, universities and other research institutes have shifted away from tenure at all levels of academia in the last thirty years towards meeting sta ff needs with short-term and non-tenure track positions [3].

For knowledge intensive domains, production is characterized by long-term spillovers both through time and through the knowledge network of associated ideas and agents. A potential drawback of professions designed around short-term contracts is that there is an implicit expectation of sustained annual production that e ffectively discounts the cumulative achievements of the individual. Consequently, there is a possibility that short-term contracts may reduce the incentives for a young scientist to invest in human and social capital accumulation. Moreover, we highlight the importance of an employment relationship that is able to combine positive competitive pressure with adequate safeguards to protect against career hazards and endogenous production uncertainty an individual is likely to encounter in his/her career.

In other words, moving away from tenureship won't give you more productive personnel.\

Zz.

Closure and Fire?

This article wouldn't have caught my eye if it weren't for my ability to remember things that often are utterly useless. This article is reporting a fire at one of the physics laboratory at Reading University in the UK. By itself it isn't a significant news (well, it isn't because hopefully, no one was injured). But then I remember a while back of report that the physics program at this very same university was about to be closed.

So I wonder if (i) the two incidents are related (ii) the program still running (iii) this simply what's left of the program after closure (iv) I am hallucinating.

Zz.

Another Tragic Death of US Science Student

The tragic death of a US undergraduate physics student at Yale this past week brought back memories of another tragic death a couple of years ago at UCLA. In that earlier blog entry, I mentioned that, due to the less stringent training and safety review process at most universities, I'm surprised that such an accident doesn't occur more often. Unfortunately, they are.

I think everyone working in the field, except for theorists, needs to be told that there are aspects of doing science that can be dangerous if one isn't paying careful attention. A simple rubbing of one's eye while doing laser alignment can cause an accidental exposure of one's eye to that laser light. Many things can go wrong, and many times, they do when one isn't properly trained or be made aware of of the hazards. Luckily, most of the accidents are minor, but some time, it takes only one mistake to result in such tragic consequence.

As an experimentalist, my main focus has always been the work. But luckily, even though it can be annoying, the constant hammering of safety issues and the hazards that I face each day while at work do result in my conscious awareness of what I do and how I do it. When you deal with something where a serious mistake can lead to a life-or-death situation, you tend to want all the information you can get before doing the work.

One would hope that with this latest accident, universities will pay even more attention on how graduate students are trained to safely do their work.

Zz.

Physics Enrollments In US Universities

The latest data on physics enrollments in US universities are out. The latest survey came from 2008 and looks at not only the number of students at the undergraduate and graduate level in physics, but also the number of US universities providing Bachelor, Masters, and Ph.D degrees in physics.

In terms of enrollments, there is a clear trend in the increase in the number of US students in physics graduate programs during the last 10 years of the survey, whereas the population of international students have been either flat, or slightly decreasing over the last 4 years of the survey. This could be directly due to a delayed effect on visa restrictions after Sept. 11, 2001.

Zz.

The Science of Cooking

Hey, remember way back when I mentioned the story that several haute cuisine and avant-garde chefs are coming to Harvard to participate in a gastronomy physics course? Well now we have a report on it.

In this exclusive interview with physicsworld.com, one of the course organizers, David Weitz, professor of physics and applied physics in Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, explains how cooking and food provide neat reference points for studying a variety of complex phenomena – from foams and emulsions to supercooling and complex phase changes.

"It's been beneficial and enjoyable for all of us," he says of the course, which completed its first run at the end of last year. "I'm pretty sure the students really enjoy it [and] it's certainly a wonderful way to teach freshman physics."

You can view the video interview at the link given above or see it here:



Zz.

PDE Class Rumor Creates Excitement?

Oooh.... a rumor on a possible creation of a Partial Differential Equation class! This is a damn, fine gossip! :)

OK, I read this news report, and then scratched my head, and then read it again, and then said to myself "OK, what did I miss here?" :)

It seems that the rumor that the Physics Dept. at McGill University in Canada might create a class in Partial Differential Equation is causing an excitement not seen since "... they put a flat screen in the foyer has Rutherford Physics .... " Oh my! That's is an excitement!

“PDEs is one of those things that if you want to do physics, it pretty much puts up a wall if you don’t have it,” says McGill Society of Physics Students VP Academic Nina Kudryashova. “It’s so omnipresent.”

Although it’s been brought up, it is unlikely that PDEs will become a requirement anytime soon. “To even give it rumour status is going a little far” Physics Undergraduate Curriculum Committee Chairman Professor Kenneth Ragan says, “and for current [physics] students lacking PDEs, it’s not fatal.”

Physics professors often include higher-level math, like PDEs, in their curriculum on a need-to-know basis: if a particular tool from a math course which is not required for physics majors is needed, the professor will explain it in class.

Er... Hum. When I was an undergraduate student, I took a class on PDE from the Math dept. There wasn't ANY question on whether it was needed or not, since we ALL know that a physics undergraduate NEEDS to know PDE. Nowadays, many physics dept. have courses in "mathematical physics", in which PDEs are covered. I think teaching it on a "need-to-know" basis is highly inefficient, especially when it is taught during the actual physics class where PDE is needed. You are trying to learn both the physics, and the mathematics, at the same time. I've mentioned in my "So You Want To Be A Physicist" essay why this is not the best way to learn physics (read the chapter of mathematical preparation).

It is interesting that, a "rumor" that most of us don't consider to be anything significant, is creating quite an "excitement" among McGill's physics students. Could it be that they are really indicating that there is a need for such a class? Even if it isn't just a course in PDE alone, a mathematical physics class using a text like Mary Boas' "Mathematical Methods in the Physical Science" could fulfill the same needs.

Zz.

A University Creates Physics Ph.D Program

Here's a piece of news that bucked the trend nowadays of schools shutting down physics programs. The University of Tulsa, Oklahoma has approved the addition of a Ph.D program in physics. Enrollment will begin as soon as Fall 2011.

Three to five graduate students are expected to be accepted each year in order to maintain the department’s low student-to-faculty ratio and guarantee that students receive the individual attention which they have come to expect from TU.

The doctoral program is a natural addition to the department, which has offered a Master’s degree in physics and engineering physics for three years.

Hopefully, they'll be able to attract students, or even keep the ones they have in their Masters program. Still, this is one of those "unusual" stores that I didn't think that I would read, consider how schools, especially smaller ones, are struggling to keep many physics programs open.

Zz.

2009 US Physics Department Roster

The AIP has just released the latest 2009-2010 academic year roster for the Physics Departments at US institutions. Both the number of physics bachelor degree granted continues to increase.

The number of physics bachelor’s granted continues to climb, with 5,908 degrees in the class of 2009. As physics undergraduate enrollments continue to increase, bachelor’s production will also see increases. PhD’s are also on the rise with 1,554 conferred in the class of 2009.

Zz.

Wichita State University Physics Dept. On The Chopping Block

Here comes another physics program that is slated to be "reoriented". The physics department, and degree program, at the Wichita State University in Kansas is being considered to be eliminated. I suppose if this is a school that emphasized mainly liberal arts subject areas, it is understandable. But WSU kinda sold itself as a school with a strong engineering program. So it is a bit confusing how they could hope to continue selling itself as that but lacks a physics department.

One also wonders if the data being used to argue for its elimination is outdated, as stated in the article.

But supporters of the physics department say demoting physics from a major to a grouping of courses would damage WSU's national reputation. The department chairman, professor Nick Solomey, said Miller's numbers are way out of date in that February study, and that Miller's proposal is destructive.

All the problems Miller cites did exist two years ago, Solomey said, when he was hired by the administration to revive the department. But he did revive it, he said; there are now 38 majors, and eight students graduating; there will be larger numbers in the year to come. The problem is well on it's way to being solved; the numbers trend is up, test scores are up, he said.

Other physics programs have had to face similar fate, with varying degree of success. We'll have to see how this turns out.

Zz.

Culinary Physics Coming to Harvard

It was only a couple of days ago that I pointed to an article on the Physics of Cooking. Now comes a news report that avant-garde chef Ferran Adrià will be joining other chefs in teaching a course in gastronomy physics at Harvard.

Over 13 weeks, Andrés and Adrià will teach multiple times, while such renowned chefs as Blue Hill's Dan Barber and another Michelin-starred chef from Spain, Joan Roca, will appear once. Students will attend chef demonstrations, physics lectures and labs that explain the structure and characteristics of a classic emulsion (a liquid dispersed into another liquid) and more recent inventions such as Adrià's famous foams (air bubbles surrounded by thin sheets of fluid).

With a greater understanding of the physical parameters of food, students will learn how to manipulate them. Ditto for the chefs. Much of the culinary invention in recent decades has been a result of trial and error rather than scientific research. Adrià is reported to have invented the foam after a friend gave him a canister of nitrous oxide with which to experiment. Andrés developed a hot and cold foie gras soup at Minibar not because he knew that liquids at different temperatures have different densities (he learned that later) but because he had seen the technique used in Irish coffee.

I've seen Adria at his restaurant in one of the episodes of "Bizarre Foods" on the Travel Channel. While there certainly is a lot of creativity (and science) involved in his food preparation and presentation, I must say that I kinda like my food to be more "natural" rather than processed that much. I can understand the foam and the various nifty sauces to enhance the food, but when it has been transformed that much, it no longer becomes that appealing to me. Of course, I'm sure these things are wonderfully delicious, but I guess that my preference has always been the non-pretentious ethnic and simpler ma-and-pa type of cuisine.

It will be interesting if Harvard would put video of these courses online.

Zz.

Brian Cox Deserts Labour Party

You have to be a really popular physicist when the possibility that you will vote for a different political party made the news. This is the case for Brian Cox, who has indicated that he will no longer support the current UK's Labour Party and will vote for Liberal Democrat instead.

He said that the Labour government’s investment in research and development was worse in real terms than it had been under Margaret Thatcher. In Cox’s view, the 2007 funding crisis that struck the Science and Technology Facilities Council, which supports research into physics and space technology, had been a “cock-up, the biggest screw-up in science policy in the past decade”.

Britain’s international reputation for science had been damaged, he said. Overall, Labour’s record on science funding was “not as good as it should have been”.

It's one of the more interesting scenario for the UK, where it seems to go the opposite way of the US, France, Germany, China, Japan, South Korea, etc. during this tight economic times. All of those countries significantly increased spending in the sciences during the past year with the hope that this is a future investment that will invigorate the economy in the long run.

Zz.

Number of Physics Faculty

I finally had a chance to look at one of the recent survey results published by the AIP. This is a survey of the physics faculty at US educational institutions done in 2008. It covers institutions having Bachelor, Masters, or Ph.D in physics degrees as the highest granting degree.

The most obvious conclusion here is how stagnant the number of faculty member has been since 1998. In fact, if one look at Fig. 1, since 2004, the number has remained relatively the same across all three types of institutions. One sees this conclusion both in the total number of physics faculty members, and in the average number per institution.

What does this mean, boys and girls? It means that if you want to do physics AND then get a job in a university as a physics faculty, someone must either leave first, or retire, before there is an opening for you to take. It also means that if you are majoring in a field of physics that isn't that employable outside of academia, you will have a tough competition in trying to get the job that you want.

Of course, this trend doesn't take into account the influx of money from this year's stimulus bill and whether that created additional jobs that was never available. Still, this is only a temporary infusion, and it is still uncertain whether any physics jobs created out of such funds will actually last.

Zz.

Statement on Research Experiences for Undergraduates

The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) Executive Board has released a statement on research experiences for undergraduate physics majors.

The American Association of Physics Teachers urges that every physics and astronomy department provide its majors and potential physics majors with the opportunities and encouragement to engage in a meaningful and appropriate undergraduate research experience.

There!

From my perspective, the "meaningful and appropriate" part of undergraduate research experience isn't just about doing "new" work or publishing some amazing discovery. That's just a bonus. What is more important is that the student learns the technique and procedure, and even more important, learns to think things through and be systematic in doing something. Those are skills that can only be acquired, not taught, and they transcend beyond just doing physics research. To me, those are the more important aspect out of doing research work that the student can acquire.

Zz.

How To Make A Comet

This is sort of a "trip report" of the 2009 Open House at Indiana University's Physics and Astronomy Dept. It sounds like a fun event, including an instruction on how to make a comet!

In the hands-on astronomy exhibit, my oldest son devoted about ten minutes to making a comet. Ingredients include: water, ammonia, dirt, corn syrup, and dry ice … plus some sarcasm and melodrama. A couple hours later, the comet didn’t look as pretty, but it retained enough mass to make it to our freezer. I fear this may be a summer snow ball accident waiting to happen.

Definitely a fun Fall event for those who can make it next year.

Zz.