Impatience

The first Phys. Rev. I read as a graduate student, I carried around with me for weeks. I read it carefully, underlined everything that I thought I understood (or that I didn’t understand; yes, I know how absurd doing both sounds), looked up all the references and tried to read them, and worried about what it all meant. I still didn’t get the paper fully, couldn’t reproduce all the calculations. At some point during that period of my life, I remember walking into the journals room of the Physics Mathematics Astronomy Library at UT and being struck with a  feeling that I was doomed. If it took me weeks to read one paper, how could I ever hope to keep up with a discipline where thousands of pages in my field were being published every week?

Since then, I’ve gotten a lot more practiced at keeping up with the literature, at skimming the abstracts, at extracting the core meaning of a paper quickly. Or so I tell myself. And at writing papers, too. I understand now that a paper is a contribution to the discussion, and not each one has to have the earth-shaking impact of one of Einstein’s miracle year papers, and am able to put them together without that nervousness that inflicted me early in the game, and I see still affecting my younger colleagues when confronted with the task. I tend to write drafts of papers pretty quickly, and have been reasonably successful at getting a steady stream of publications.

But maybe I’ve become too practiced. Case in point: I started, about a week ago, to put together some ideas about steady-state entropy production in non-equilibrium systems (if you care) — one of my collaborators and I have some results that I believe can contribute to the literature. And here I am, impatient with myself that the paper isn’t written yet, while simultaneously feeling that everything I’m thinking of saying is already well-known (well, no, it’s only well-known and obvious to me and my collaborators because I’ve been staring at this for a while. It is actually new, as my background literature search for the last 3 days has shown me).

So this blog entry — as some before — is a reminder to self: It takes time to write; it takes time to create ideas. It is also very possible to become too used to a result, and stop seeing it as the fresh and interesting idea it would be to others. And so sometimes I need to step outside myself to be able to write up my own results.

And so it goes.

Exploring the laboratory landscape: How much and to what end?

I’m at the Topical Conference on Advanced Laboratories, and the first day has highlighted several questions about the laboratory curriculum that have been rolling around in the back of my mind. The conference considers advanced labs to be any labs beyond intro physics, and participants come from a wide range of institutions. One obvious topic of discussion was the objectives for advanced labs, and the list was amazingly lengthy, ranging from experimental and technical skills to conceptual understanding of physics topics to exposing students to the nature of science and allowing students to practice collaboration, interpersonal, and communication skills.  Such lists are particularly daunting considering that at many schools there are only two or three semesters of lab beyond introductory physics.

Another clear message today was that there is no standard advanced lab course or curriculum. This morning began with presentations by Isaac Chung about MIT’s junior lab and Eric Black about Caltech’s senior physics lab. These are two lab courses with significant reputations in the physics community, but they are quite different in their approaches. At Caltech, there are no reports (oral or written) and little emphasis is placed on data analysis. MIT’s advanced lab on the other hand has 70% of the grade wrapped up in PRL-like papers and APS style oral presentations with extensive follow-up questioning/feedback by faculty. For some participants, there was a feeling that the excessive demands placed on the advanced laboratory courses made them pressure cookers both for students and faculty, while others like Derek Kimball at Cal State East Bay reported on making the advanced lab accessible to first-years and sophomores with the aim of building student interest and making the physics major more welcoming. Carl Grossman of Swarthmore College presented Swat’s approach to advanced lab that utilizes faculty research expertise and spreads the responsibility for advanced lab among five different faculty members (if no one is on leave).

At Carleton, beyond the ten weeks of introductory physics, students are required to take three additional ten week courses that have a significant lab component: Physics 228 Atomic and Nuclear Physics, Physics 235 Electricity and Magnetism, and Physics 342 Contemporary Experimental Physics. (I’m not considering elective classes with labs.) While this seems fairly standard compared to other physics departments, it doesn’t represent an even distribution between theory and experiment in the curriculum. Nearly all physics courses include a theoretical component, if by theoretical one refers to developing mathematical descriptions and models of physical phenomena. Thus it’s not entirely accurate to claim that the current undergraduate physics curriculum represents an even distribution between theory and experiment. Perhaps physics departments ought to consider how to integrate experimental work more meaningfully throughout the curriculum and how to address the challenges that result when the objectives for the experimental curriculum grow too demanding.

The question of what’s the appropriate line between providing novel lab experiences that require practical troubleshooting and ensuring that you don’t unduly frustrate students came up in several discussions I had today. This question often reminds me of the wonderful essay by Martin Schwartz titled, “The importance of stupidity in scientific research”. The essay is focused on graduate education, emphasizing the importance of “productive stupidity” when faced with the unknown, but I think it is worth considering more broadly. Schwartz writes:

“One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time. No doubt this can be difficult for students who are accustomed to getting the answer right… I think scientific education might do more to ease what is a very big transition: from learning what other people once discovered to making your own discoveries.”

Labs seem like a great opportunity to help students make this transition. In curricular labs, the balance is to allow the genuine exploration and (limited) frustration to unfold, while also introducing particular conceptual ideas or experimental techniques.

Other interesting questions that emerged in today’s discussions and presentations:

• Where does one draw a line between research experiences and advanced lab courses. Do we even need to worry about such a line? Do we expect advanced lab courses prepare students for research? Can most of the benefits of advanced labs be gained by genuine undergraduate research experiences? Or is the breadth of advanced labs important?

• How do we emphasize the importance of the lab notebook? Is there a role for electronic lab notebooks? Can we develop a lab notebook evaluation rubric that can be applied across labs/institutions?

• In physics, we often talk about the cumulative, integrated nature of the theory curriculum. Should we think more carefully about how to create a cumulative, integrated experimental curriculum?

• Are the objectives for the advanced lab curriculum what they should be? Considering the lengthy list of objectives often mentioned in relation to the lab curriculum, do we allot a reasonable number of course hours to meet these objectives?

Anacapa at Amherst

(Adapted from an Amherst College Press Release)

AMHERST, Mass. — The Anacapa Society, a professional organization promoting research in all areas of theoretical and computational physics at primarily undergraduate institutions, has found a permanent residence. On Tuesday, June 2, the group signed a letter of understanding with Amherst College that formalized its relationship with the school and established the college’s campus as its official home.

David Gross, winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics, directs the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) at the University of California at Santa Barbara, which has played a key role in the genesis of the Anacapa Society.  He said, “I am delighted to witness the launching of the Anacapa Society and proud of the help that the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics has given to this organization.  Through our KITP Scholars Program that brings theoretical physicists from primarily undergraduate institutions to our Institute for annual two-week visits, we have endeavored to help physicists at institutions with a strong undergraduate teaching mission maintain a vigorous research program.  We believe that strong research is of paramount importance to quality undergraduate education and to science as a whole.  I am sure the Anacapa Society will play an essential role in this effort, and I wish it well.”

The origins of the Anacapa Society date back to a serendipitous meeting at a 1999 Newton Institute workshop in Cambridge, England. There, four physicists from undergraduate institutions discussed over lunch the possibility of forming an organization for theorists at liberal arts colleges. Independently, in 2001, Arjendu Pattanayak, then recently hired by Carleton College, thought it would be useful to assemble a meeting of theorists at similar institutions, and proceeded to obtain the support of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics and its Director, David Gross, to sponsor such a workshop. The First Workshop for Theoretical Physics at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions took place at the KITP in Santa Barbara, California, July 21-25, 2003. As a result of the success of the first workshop, and building on the recommendations coming out of that workshop, a follow-up meeting was held at the KITP, July 16-27, 2007, with the express goal of forming a national organization to benefit theoretical physicists at PUI. The Anacapa Society was founded at that meeting on July 20, 2007.

The name “Anacapa Society” is meant to reflect the organization’s origins and mission. Anacapa Island, one of the Channel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara, is known for its distinctive natural bridge. This geographical setting serves as a metaphor for the vision of the Society, “to connect theoretical physicists at primarily undergraduate institutions with the larger physics and academic communities, while at the same time affirming their distinctive identity.”

There’s also a workshop (more details on the Anacapa Society Website):

The first-ever Anacapa Society Workshop for theoretical and computational physicists at primarily undergraduate institutions will be held at Amherst College this summer, August 17-20. This workshop is being funded in part by the National Science Foundation, as part of the first ever grant proposal submitted to the NSF on behalf of the Anacapa Society.

The focus of the workshop is twofold: To provide an opportunity for interaction among Anacapa members on research matters, and to provide theoretical/computational physicists at undergraduate institutions with some tools to handle critical career moments. Thus the workshop is focused both on scientific research and career development.

The workshop will include time for research talks; sessions on three critical career stages: starting a job at PUI, approaching tenure review, and sustaining research activitiy at mid-career; and unsheduled time for informal interactions.