A Study of the Development of the Paradigms in Physics Program

Designing the course to teach physics while exploring contemporary challenges.

In reflecting upon the week discussing models of the Earth's climate, the faculty member described the students' interest in this topic as a context for learning physics:

I think the topic engages everybody; I feel like there's really good attentiveness in the class, and at the same time, it's giving them practice with these things that they need practice with, so I think this is a great example where the material is where there's a great synergy between choosing a contemporary challenge and teaching the physics, and it's working really well. We're having to talk about integrating spectra, converting between power and intensity, and equating energy balances, so all of those concepts I think will come up again and again in physics.

In particular, the discussion included insights about the role of uncertainties in building models:

I was happy to make connections today with how the experimental physics has to deal with uncertainties in the experiment and when you build a model you have to deal with uncertainties in the model. I'm hesitating because who knows if it sunk in but I thought it was a great opportunity to bring up the point that this model, which is really important, how hot will the Earth get as we change carbon dioxide, which leads to a lot of political arguments, because of the uncertainties in the model, those things are at the heart of what a physicist has to deal with, quantitatively trying to figure out how good is the model? What are the error bars on our estimates that we're getting out of the model? and the inputs that we're putting into the model? They've had some experience doing that in the physics experiment, as the lab, but I hope that they see that it goes beyond just a contrived physics experiment in the lab but there are some real world places where this is going to come up again and again, where uncertainty will be the difference between having the public get behind policies that stop climate change, or not get behind it. So understanding uncertainty is really critical.

Using technology to enhance instruction.

The studio classroom had been set up with a series of three large white boards on which faculty could write as they talked. A camera connected to a computer projected what was on the white board to screens on the walls around the room. Students sitting at a table could control which of the three white boards to view on their nearest screen. This meant that often the screens showed different views, with frequent delays as the students controlling the switch chose to listen rather than attend to switching among the white boards currently in use. This faculty member, however wrote on a tablet connected to a projector so that all the screens on the walls showed simultaneously what was being written or what was being imported from a website on the Internet. The faculty member made video recordings of what happened in class by doing a screen capture so students not only had up-to-date viewing in class but also access after class to the file for review as needed:

Something that I've done for the first time in this course was doing the screen capture video recordings of the lectures; I want to get more feedback from the students but my feeling is that I can, I was really happy when a student said “Oh I'll just look that up on the video!” Somebody's using it! . . . Students could relax a little bit more and not feel quite so tense about having a lot of material thrown at them because they knew that if they wanted to, they could rewind after class.

These files were posted on the course website so the students could access them throughout the term.