15,487 research outputs found
Computation across the curriculum: What skills are needed?
Computation, the use of a computer to solve, simulate, or visualize a
physical problem, has revolutionized how physics research is done. Computation
is used widely to model systems, to simulate experiments, and to analyze data.
Yet, in most undergraduate programs, students have little formal opportunity to
engage with computation and, thus, are left to their own to develop their
computational expertise. As part of a larger project to study how computation
is incorporated in some undergraduate physics programs (and how it might be
incorporated further), we convened a mini-conference and conducted a series of
interviews with industry professionals, academic faculty, and employed
bachelor's graduates who make use of computation in their everyday work. We
present preliminary results that speak to how participants developed the
requisite skills to do professional computational work and what skills they
perceive are necessary to conduct such work.Comment: 4 pages; accepted to 2015 Physics Education Research Conference
Proceeding
On the Prevalence and Nature of Computational Instruction in Undergraduate Physics Programs across the United States
A national survey of physics faculty was conducted to investigate the
prevalence and nature of computational instruction in physics courses across
the United States. 1246 faculty from 357 unique institutions responded to the
survey. The results suggest that more faculty have some form of computational
teaching experience than a decade ago, but it appears that this experience does
not necessarily translate to computational instruction in undergraduate
students' formal course work. Further, we find that formal programs in
computational physics are absent from most departments. A majority of faculty
do report using computation on homework and in projects, but few report using
computation with interactive engagement methods in the classroom or on exams.
Specific factors that underlie these results are the subject of future work,
but we do find that there is a variation on the reported experience with
computation and the highest degree that students can earn at the surveyed
institutions.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure
Rubric Design for Separating the Roles of Open-Ended Assessments
End-of-course assessments play important roles in the ongoing attempt to
improve instruction in physics courses. Comparison of students' performance on
assessments before and after instruction gives a measure of student learning.
In addition, analysis of students' answers to assessment items provides insight
into students' difficulties with specific concepts and practices. While
open-ended assessments scored with detailed rubrics provide useful information
about student reasoning to researchers, end users need to score students'
responses so that they may obtain meaningful feedback on their instruction. One
solution that satisfies end users and researchers is a grading rubric that
separates scoring student work and uncovering student difficulties. We have
constructed a separable rubric for the Colorado Classical Mechanics/Math
Methods Instrument that has been used by untrained graders to score the
assessment reliably, and by researchers to unpack common student difficulties.
Here we present rubric development, measures of inter-rater reliability, and
some uncovered student difficulties.Comment: 4 pages, PERC 2014 Proceeding
Methods for Analyzing Pathways through a Physics Major
Physics Education Research frequently investigates what students studying
physics do on small time scales (e.g. single courses, observations within
single courses), or post-education time scales (e.g., what jobs do physics
majors get?) but there is little research into how students get from the
beginning to the end of a physics degree. Our work attempts to visualize
students paths through the physics major, and quantitatively describe the
students who take physics courses, receive physics degrees, and change degree
paths into and out of the physics program at Michigan State University.Comment: submitted to Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings 201
Assessing Student Learning in Middle-Division Classical Mechanics/Math Methods
Reliable and validated assessments of introductory physics have been
instrumental in driving curricular and pedagogical reforms that lead to
improved student learning. As part of an effort to systematically improve our
sophomore-level Classical Mechanics and Math Methods course (CM 1) at CU
Boulder, we are developing a tool to assess student learning of CM 1 concepts
in the upper-division. The Colorado Classical Mechanics/Math Methods Instrument
(CCMI) builds on faculty-consensus learning goals and systematic observations
of student difficulties. The result is a 9-question open-ended post-test that
probes student learning in the first half of a two-semester classical mechanics
/ math methods sequence. In this paper, we describe the design and development
of this instrument, its validation, and measurements made in classes at CU
Boulder.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, 1 table; submitted to 2013 Proceedings of the
Physics Education Research Conferenc
Quasi-Periodic Oscillations and energy spectra from the two brightest Ultra-Luminous X-ray sources in M82
Ultra-Luminous X-ray sources are thought to be accreting black holes that
might host Intermediate Mass Black Holes (IMBH), proposed to exist by
theoretical studies, even though a firm detection (as a class) is still
missing. The brightest ULX in M82 (M82 X-1) is probably one of the best
candidates to host an IMBH. In this work we analyzed the data of the recent
release of observations obtained from M82 X-1 taken by XMM-Newton. We performed
a study of the timing and spectral properties of the source. We report on the
detection of (46+-2) mHz Quasi-Periodic Oscillations (QPOs) in the power
density spectra of two observations. A comparison of the frequency of these
high-frequency QPOs with previous detections supports the 1:2:3 frequency
distribution as suggested in other studies. We discuss the implications if the
(46+-2) mHz QPO detected in M82 X-1 is the fundamental harmonic, in analogy
with the High-Frequency QPOs observed in black hole binaries. For one of the
observations we have detected for the first time a QPO at 8 mHz (albeit at a
low significance), that coincides with a hardening of the spectrum. We suggest
that the QPO is a milli-hertz QPO originating from the close-by transient ULX
M82 X-2, with analogies to the Low-Frequency QPOs observed in black hole
binaries.Comment: 9 pages (with 4 figures and 4 tables). Accepted for publication in
MNRAS (26/09/13
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