What does it mean to "make sense" of physics?

What does it mean to "make sense" of physics? It's not a simple question. Most people have an intuitive feeling for when things do (or do not) make sense to them. But, putting this feeling into words--especially actionable words--is another task entirely.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Physics Teacher. https://aapt.scitation.org/journal/pt

Computational Essays in the Physics Classroom

Writing and argumentation are critical to both professional physics and physics education. However, the skill of making an extended argument in writing is often overlooked in physics classrooms, apart from certain practices like lab notebooks or mathematical proofs. Computation is also critical to both professional physics and, increasingly, physics education. In recent years we have begun to develop a class of assignment, known as a computational essay, to both leverage the creative affordances of computation and help students build their argumentative writing skills. Computational essays are a type of essay or report that combine text and code to express an idea or make an argument, usually written in notebook software. In this article, we describe the motivation and philosophy behind computational essays, as well as initial results from a pilot implementation in an introductory undergraduate electricity and magnetism course.Comment: Published in The Physics Teacher: https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/10.1119/1.514547

Lunar navigation study, volume 2 Final report, Jan. - Dec. 1966

Performance data utilization in mission phase, lunar exploration phase, and navigational phase of lunar roving vehicle mission

Computational Essays: An Avenue for Scientific Creativity in Physics

Computation holds great potential for introducing new opportunities for creativity and exploration into the physics curriculum. At the University of Oslo we have begun development of a new class of assignment called computational essays to help facilitate creative, open-ended computational physics projects. Computational essays are a type of essay or narrative that combine text and code to express an idea or make an argument, usually written in computational notebooks. During a pilot implementation of computational essays in an introductory electricity and magnetism course, students reported that computational essays facilitated creative investigation at a variety of levels within their physics course. They also reported finding this creativity as being both challenging and motivating. Based on these reflections, we argue that computational essays are a useful tool for leveraging the creative affordances of programming in physics education.Comment: Accepted to the 2019 Physics Education Research Conference Proceeding

Recurring questions that sustain the sensemaking frame

Many physics instructors aim to support student sensemaking in their classrooms. However, this can be challenging since instances of sensemaking tend to be short-lived, with students often defaulting to approaches based on answer-making or rote mathematical manipulation. In this study, we present evidence that specific recurring questions can serve a key role in the sensemaking process. Using a case-study of two students discussing an E&M thought experiment, we show how students' entry into sensemaking is marked by the articulation of a particular question, based on a perceived gap or inconsistency in understanding and how this question recurs throughout their subsequent explanations, arguing that these recurrences may serve to stabilize and extend the process.Comment: Accepted to the proceedings of the 2018 Physics Education Research Conferenc

Developing a Natural Language Processing Approach for Analyzing Student Ideas in Calculus-Based Introductory Physics

Research characterizing common student ideas about particular physics topics has made a significant impact on university-level physics teaching by providing knowledge that supports instructors to target their instruction and by informing curriculum development. This work utilizes a Natural Language Processing algorithm (Latent Dirichlet Allocation, or LDA) to categorize student ideas, with the goal of significantly expediting the process of categorizing student ideas. We preliminarily test the LDA approach by applying the algorithm to a collection of introductory physics student responses to a conceptual question about circuits, specifically attending to whether it is useful for characterizing conceptual resources, or student ideas that may be fruitful for science learning. We find that for a large enough collection of student responses (N ≈ 500), LDA can be useful for characterizing student resources for conceptual physics questions. We discuss some considerations that researchers may take into account as they interpret the results of the LDA algorithm for characterizing student’s physics ideas

How computation can facilitate sensemaking about physics: A case study

We present a case study featuring a first-year bio-science university student using computation to solve a radioactive decay problem and interpret the results. In a semi-structured cognitive interview, we use this case to examine the process of sensemaking in a computational science context. We observe the student entering the sensemaking process by inspecting and comparing computational outputs. She then makes several attempts to resolve the perceived inconsistency, foregrounding knowledge from different domains. The key to making sense of the model for this student proves to be thinking about how to implement a better model computationally. This demonstrates that integrating computation in physics activities may provide students with opportunities to engage in sensemaking and critical thinking. We finally discuss some implications for instruction.Comment: 4 pages. Updated after peer review to be ready for inclusion in the PERC 2018 proceeding

Lunar navigation study, sections 1 through 7 Final report, Jun. 1964 - May 1965

Lunar navigation analysis using passive nongyro, inertial navigation, and radio frequency technolog

Lunar navigation study, summary volume Final report, Jun. 1964 - May 1965

Lunar surface navigation and guidance study to implement lunar surface vehicle exploration mission

Quantifying the checks and balances of collaborative governance systems for adaptive carnivore management

Recovering or threatened carnivore populations are often harvested to minimise their impact on human activities, such as livestock farming or game hunting. Increasingly, harvest quota decisions involve a set of scientific, administrative and political institutions operating at national and sub-national levels whose interactions and collective decision-making aim to increase the legitimacy of management and ensure population targets are met. In practice, however, assessments of how quota decisions change between these different actors and what consequences these changes have on population trends are rare. We combine a state-space population modelling approach with an analysis of quota decisions taken at both regional and national levels between 2007 and 2018 to build a set of decision-making models that together predict annual harvest quota values for Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) in Norway. We reveal a tendency for administrative decision-makers to compensate for consistent quota increases by political actors, particularly when the lynx population size estimate is above the regional target. Using population forecasts based on the ensemble of decision-making models, we show that such buffering of political biases ensures lynx population size remains close to regional and national targets in the long term. Our results go beyond the usual qualitative assessment of collaborative governance systems for carnivore management, revealing a system of checks and balances that, in the case of lynx in Norway, ensures both multi-stakeholder participation and sustainable harvest quotas. Nevertheless, we highlight important inter-regional differences in decision-making and population forecasts, the socio-ecological drivers of which need to be better understood to prevent future population declines. Synthesis and applications. Our work analyses the sequence of decisions leading to yearly quotas for lynx harvest in Norway, highlighting the collaborative and structural processes that together shape harvest sustainability. In doing so, we provide a predictive framework to evaluate participatory decision-making processes in wildlife management, paving the way for scientists and decision-makers to collaborate more widely in identifying where decision biases might lie and how institutional arrangements can be optimised to minimise them. We emphasise, however, that this is only possible if wildlife management decisions are documented and transparent