Physics in education

The data we report on in this column come from the Nationwide Survey of High School Physics Teachers. Since 1987, the American Institute of Physics (AIP) and the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) have sponsored the High School Teacher Survey. Prior to our initial study, much of the previous literature focusing on high school physics employed anecdotal evidence or qualitative surveys for curriculum reviews or explorations of teachers' experiences and pedagogical techniques. As a direct response to this dearth of data, the Nationwide Survey of High School Physics Teachers was initiated in 1986–87 to answer questions about the number of teachers teaching physics, the educational background of these teachers, the number of students enrolled in physics, the variety of physics classes being offered, the demographics of the students and teachers, the textbooks being used, and the number of high schools offering physics regularly. Since the beginning of this study, we have surveyed both public and private high schools in the United States. The results of our study provide the definitive data about physics in U.S. high schools. The initial survey was conducted during the 1986–87 school year. The second was completed during 1989–90. Beginning with the 1992–93 survey, we have conducted the survey every four years. The 2012–13 survey will be the eighth in the series. Thus, we have a rich history of physics teaching in U.S. high schools.

PHYSICS teaching by television or film, in terms of measuralbe contributions to learning, appears to compare favorably with conventional classroom instruction in high schools, according to a report issued recently by the American Institute of Physics. The report (A Study of the Teaching of Physics by Film and Television, by Grant O. Gale) summarizes the results of an evaluation program carried out in 1957–58 under the joint sponsorship of the AIP and the American Association of Physics Teachers and with support of the Fund for the Advancement of Education.

The American Center for Physics will bring three of the nation's leading physics organizations to College Park, Md., to create a focus for physics in the nation's capital. Groundbreaking for the new center was on July 29. It is scheduled to open in September 1993. The initial organizations that will share the site are the American Association of Physics Teachers, the American Institute of Physics, and the American Physical Society.

“Can Four‐Year Colleges Prepare Physics Majors for Graduate Work in Physics?” In a paper bearing this title George Pake discussed some of the problems faced by four‐year colleges trying to prepare physics majors. Dr. Pake's article aroused a great deal of interest and concern. To a large extent it was the trigger for the formation of the Committee on Physics Faculties in Colleges, set up by the American Association of Physics Teachers and the American Institute of Physics, with the aid of a grant by the National Science Foundation. The Committee (COPFIC) was asked to study the problems of physics in the colleges, particularly from the point of view of the conditions necessary to recruit able physics faculty members and to retain them there.

This occasion is especially noteworthy in view of the historic significance of the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the founding of both the American Association of Physics Teachers and the American Institute of Physics. Just a quarter-century ago, on December 29, 1930, I had the pleasure of participating in that momentous luncheon conference in Cleveland, Ohio, when the AAPT was officially organized. A short time later, on January 27, 1932, the fledgling Association acquired equal status with the other physics societies in the plans for the work of the AIP, this Institute having been officially activated on May 3, 1931.

YOUR NEWS WANTED The news section gives updates on what has been happening in physics education worldwide. Items included show how events in one country could be relevant to good practice elsewhere in the world. Contributions are welcome from all our readers and should be about 200 to 300 words and can include a picture.

Robert Resnick

Commentary: Diversity in physics: Are you part of the problem?

Thomas E. Graedel, an atmospheric scientist at AT&T Bell Laboratories (Murray Hill, N.J.), has been made an AGU representative to the Governing Board of the American Institute of Physics (AIP). The board oversees the operations of AIP, a nonprofit umbrella organization for 10 member societies, including AGU. Other AGU members currently on the governing board include Orson Anderson, a geophysicist at the University of California, Los Angeles; AGU General Secretary Peter M. Bell of the Norton Company, Worcester, Mass.; AGU Executive Director A. F. Spilhaus, Jr.; and Martin Walt, a geophysicist with the Lockheed Corporation in Palo Alto, Calif.All AGU members receive the benefits of membership in AIP, including the monthly magazine Physics Today. Other AIP services available to AGU members include access to an employment service, AIP's electronic network Pi‐NET, and an insurance program. AGU members can also subscribe to journals published by the American Physical Society, another AIP member society, at discounted rates.—WWM

Prominent research physicist Sid Nagel writes about the fragmentation of physics, but does not include the growing separation between physics and physics education. Over the past 30 years, the American Association of Physics Teachers, once a society of physicists interested in teaching, has become largely a society of educators interested in physics. The number of AAPT members who are research physicists has declined while the number of physicists from high schools and two-year colleges has increased.On past occasions, top physicists like Ed Purcell and I. I. Rabi could be seen at AAPT meetings. Now, noted research physicists rarely come to a meeting unless they are being honored and asked to give an invited talk. And the joint AAPT/American Physical Society meetings that brought research physicists and physics educators together are no more.The 2002 conference of the International Research Group on Physics Teaching (GIREP) in Sweden, with a thoroughly international group of participants, had as a theme the flight from physics. Physics enrollments and degrees are down in most countries, and not one research physicist of note was among the 400 conference participants.The undergraduate physics curriculum once united physicists. We bragged that, unlike the chemists, any physicist could teach any undergraduate physics course. The knowledge base provided by the undergraduate curriculum gave physicists in all research areas the ability to move from their frontier research position, take a few steps back toward that base, and find common ground with physicists in other specialties. That ability is no longer available. The chain of logic from a specialty back to a common base is too long. So we do not talk to each other—hence Nagel’s crisis.My introductory physics text of the 1950s, Sears and Zemansky (Addison-Wesley, 1955), is a black-and-white version of current physics textbooks. My introductory texts in chemistry and biology, however, bear no resemblance to current textbooks in those fields. Students are introduced to chemistry and biology in ways that represent the disciplines as they are today. Physicists, though, introduce students to their discipline as they did 50 years ago. Yet look at how physics has changed.If we reform the structure and content of undergraduate physics to represent more accurately what contemporary research physicists do, we might establish a new knowledge base that would provide common ground for our discipline. Then, perhaps, we could talk to each other once again.© 2003 American Institute of Physics.

BEGINNING with this month's issue, the American Journal of Physics, which is the official publication of the American Association of Physics Teachers, will be under the editorship of Walter C. Michels of Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. Professor Michels, who holds the Marion Reilly Chair of Physics and is chairman of Bryn Mawr's Physics Department, succeeds the Journal's former editor, Thomas H. Osgood, who is now on leave from his post as dean of the Graduate School at Michigan State University while serving as the State Department's scientific attaché assigned to the United States Embassy in London. Dean Osgood was the Journal's second editor and served in that capacity for a period of ten years.

The American Association of Physics Teachers bestowed honors on four individuals at its 123rd meeting, held in Rochester in July.The 2001 Robert A. Millikan Award was given to Sallie A. Watkins, a professor emeritus of physics and the former dean of the college of science and mathematics at the University of Southern Colorado in Pueblo. She received the award in recognition of her “ability to identify and solve major problems in physics education and her track record in supporting those of us also working on these very difficult problems.” Virginia Trimble, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and the University of California, Irvine, received the 2001 Klopsteg Memorial Lecture Award. Trimble, who was cited for her leadership, her contributions to the literature, and her dedication as a teacher, gave a talk entitled “Cosmology: Man’s Place in the Universe.” Robert Erlich, a professor of physics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, received the Excellence in Undergraduate Physics Teaching Award for his contributions in “teaching undergraduate physics, in the use of technology, in making physics accessible to the public, and in analyzing the issues facing undergraduate physics.”The 2001 Excellence in Pre-College Physics Teaching Award went to Clarence Bakken, a teacher at Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California. Bakken was recognized for his achievements over 30 years of teaching physics and working with physics teachers and his leadership in the physics teaching community, including his activities as an apparatus developer, writer, and presenter of workshops.© 2001 American Institute of Physics.

The American Phyiscal Society has announced a forthcoming open access journal, Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Education Research. "The journal will be distributed without charge, and financed by publication charges to the authors or to the authors' institutions." The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) and the APS Forum on Education are co-sponsors.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore whether the databases from a certain library are Pareto-compliant or not? If so, to what extent is the Pareto principle performance evident among these databases? The other purpose is to determine the differences in Pareto principle performance according to time change and database type. Design/methodology/approach Data on full-text downloads from six e-resources – Elsevier ScienceDirect (SD), Wiley Blackwell, Springer Journal, EBSCO Business Source Premier (BSP), American Chemical Society and American Institute of Physics (AIP) – for the period 2007-2013 were analysed; 42 samples were collected from these databases. The proportion of frequently downloaded journals from databases was selected as an indicator to determine differences in Pareto principle performance according to time change. The difference between the proportion of frequently downloaded journals and the classic proportion of 20 per cent was used as indicator to determine difference in Pareto principle performance related to database type. Findings There are 33 samples (78.57 per cent) which exhibited the Pareto principle. Four databases – Elsevier SD, Wiley Blackwell, EBSCO BSP and AIP – constantly exhibited the Pareto principle. The differences were not significant according to time change. The two multi-discipline databases – Elsevier SD and Wiley Blackwell – fluctuated more moderately than the two single-discipline databases – EBSCO BSP and AIP. Multi-discipline and single-discipline databases showed some differences in Pareto principle performance; however, these differences were not remarkable. Originality/value The Pareto principle confirmed that there were frequent and infrequent downloads of e-journals from e-journal databases. It was of great importance to analyse these to improve digital resources acquisition and user service.

The 2021 Inclusive Curriculum in Physics Workshop Series is a three part series organized and led by the National Society of Black Physicists, the National Society of Hispanic Physicists, and the American Association of Physics Teachers. The series leverages the expertise of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) experts, as well as an organizing team of physics students, faculty and STEM professionals at different stages of their studies and careers.The purpose of the series is to: Explore the importance of EDI in the classroom and the existing instructional materials that focus on EDI, with members of the broad physics education community; Engage participants in discussion and action items around the current challenges to equity in STEM education with input from experts in the field; Provide support to working groups through a network of partners to engage in specific physics education projects using the lens of inclusion.