One snapshot of physics in urban schools

While reading the October issue of the American Journal of Physics, I was once again reminded of how skewed my perception of the state of physics education can be. While I know that many US high school students never take physics, that many high school students who do take physics are taught by “cross-over” teachers whose disciplinary training is not in physics, and that rural and urban school districts often lack the resources to provide quality high school science curriculum, I still found myself shocked by the numbers reported by Angela Kelly and Keith Sheppard in their AJP article on high school physics availability in the New York City public schools. According to the article, nearly 55% of the New York City public high schools did not offer a single physics course during the 2004-2005 academic year. At first, I thought maybe the authors were considering only college-prep physics, but no, fifty-five percent of the city high schools offered NO physics courses, not even a conceptual physics course requiring little mathematical proficiency! Not surprisingly, the burrough with the least physics availability (the Bronx) had the highest number of under-represented minorities and the poorest students. Citywide, only 20% of New York City public high school graduates have studied physics for at least one year. The numbers are a sobering reminder that the challenges of preparing a diverse cross-section of students for success in STEM disciplines in college are intimately tied to the math and science course availability and quality before students enter college.

US-India travel funds

I thought it might be useful to relay information about a new US-India travel fund in Physics, which allows both graduate students and professors to travel between the two countries. Perhaps it’s a sign of the growing maturity of the state of Indian science that such a bi-national program exists now.

More information at http://www.aps.org/programs/international/us-india-travel.cfm

Random thoughts: matter & interactions, nanoscience & disciplines

Fall term had me buried with work from Day 1: two new course preps, deadlines for various conference-related items but a lack of time to focus on research, classroom visits by senior colleagues reminding me that tenure review begins soon. (Maybe one of these days I’ll figure out how to write cogently about my conflicted feelings on the tenure process.)

Despite the various demands of the term, I’ve been enjoying the classes I’m teaching:
•        For the first time, I’m teaching the introductory mechanics course based on Chabay and Sherwood’s Matter and Interactions. I appreciate the bottom up approach of Matter and Interactions, including the presentation of a unified view of contact forces developed from the atomic perspective. Last week’s activities provide an example of the innovative nature of the Matter and Interactions approach.  The text emphasizes the ball and spring model of materials, and in class, we discussed how Young’s modulus relates to the effective stiffness of the interatomic bonding in a material. In lab, students measured Young’s modulus of both steel and aluminum wires using a set-up described by Adam Niculescu and Russell Shumaker in The Physics Teacher and expertly built by Mark Zach, our instrument project manager. Then, students wrote a Vpython program to model the propagation of sound through a chain of 100 aluminum atoms with the ball and spring model. They used the program to calculate the speed of sound in aluminum, comparing the results of their model with experimental measurements of the speed of sound in an aluminum rod and the theoretical value of the speed of sound in aluminum, calculated from Young’s modulus and the density of aluminum. As a condensed matter physicist, I enjoyed moving beyond the basic motion of blocks and carts to developing a microscopic picture of materials in an introductory class.

•        The other class I’m teaching this term is a first-year seminar, Phys 100 Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. In addition to the science, we’re also tackling broader questions about ethics, the relationship between basic and applied science, and the interplay between science and society. Another topic we’ve discussed is the role of disciplines in general and, in particular, the connection between nanoscience and the traditional scientific disciplines. Richard Jones’ writings on this topic (here and here) served to provoke our discussions. The students had some interesting perspectives. One question that came up in class: if nanoscience and nanotechnology are interdisciplinary, why is the class labeled PHYS 100? My reply to the students: because I am a physicist, I approach nanoscience with a physicist’s mindset. I teach the course differently than a biologist or chemist would. The question, however, got me thinking about interdisciplinary courses. In order to teach an interdisciplinary course, must the course be taught by faculty members from at least two different disciplines?  Or by a faculty member whose training has been interdisciplinary (i.e., a undergraduate major in one field and a PhD in a different field)? Does an interdisciplinary topic ensure a interdisciplinary class? All questions to ponder when I have more time…

Spelman graduates

A quick note to link to news about a movie produced on Spelman scientists (Spelman is an all-women historically black women’s college in Atlanta, whence they serve a historically sharply underrepresented population in the sciences).

http://www.hhmi.org/news/spelman20090929.html

Reactions

My favorite kind of conversation with a respected colleague when talking about my ongoing work goes like this: It starts with my telling them a result that I’m excited about, that I have preliminary results for, and am trying to extend. They say “Umm, that’s surprising”. If all is going well, they sit back in their chair and brace for some random nonsense that they are going to have to shoot down, because what I have just told them goes against their strongest intuitions (in case you haven’t noticed, I’m trying to use ‘they’ for the un-gendered first-person pronoun).  I then proceed to talk for a few minutes, and at the end of it, the colleague looks at me and says, “Ok, that makes sense, I buy it, cool result.”

In fact, that’s a damn good principle for getting a paper published in the first place, that there is some result that is surprising when first encountered, but when you go into the physics carefully, you are able to explain or understand it. If not surprising in the first place, why bother (as the referees will happily tell you)?  And if you can’t explain it, the referees will torture you equally happily.

When I sat down with Tomaž a couple of evenings ago to discuss my results on non-monotonicity in the quantum-classical transition, I got exactly that pair of reactions (well, he’s Slovenian, and doesn’t say ‘I buy it’ or ‘cool’ but you get the point). And we discussed matters a little further and the feedback continued to be interesting. So yes, a few conversations like this was exactly what I wanted from this trip.

Workshop at ICTP

Despite claiming I am going to be being a humanist all term, I am actually spending the week at a workshop at ICTP in Trieste, Italy at the moment, on “Pseudo-chaos and stable chaos in statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics”.

The ICTP is an interesting place, somewhat reminiscent of the KITP in Santa Barbara in that it has a small permanent faculty and staff, but mostly hosts many postdocs and visitors on short programs like the one I’m attending. Like KITP, it’s pretty much right on the water (though in this case it’s the Adriatic) and likewise its possible to spend plenty of time here sampling nature but without interacting much with the local environs since it is many kilometers from Trieste. At least at KITP there’s the University itself, and the small but interesting strip in Isla Vista — doesn’t look like we’ve even got that much here.

I am eager to get out there and sample some more of the place, though, rather than just airports and cafeterias … I’ve been for a walk on the waterfront by myself a few hours after I got here and there’s an interesting looking castle right next door (the Duino castle, which inspired Rilke’s Elegies, as well as where Boltzmann died, is a few kilometers away).

The workshop has been the usual, professionally — learned a bit during most of most of the talks, got lost and very sleepy during some of some of them (being badly jet-lagged doesn’t help), put some faces to names, including one (Angelo Vulpiani) with whom I’ve been emailing briefly on and off for about 15 years, re-met some others. The casual interactions are always interesting: I happened to sit at dinner with, and then joined for an espresso after, some of the senior lions of my field who are here — Shmuel Fishman, Uzy Smilansky, Peter Grassberger, and also Tomaz Prosen (who’s about my age, is one of the organizers, and who I know a bit from a previous workshop in Cuernavaca) and listened to the gossip, the stories, and the general chatter.

I’ve scheduled some personal discussion time with a couple of people and that face-to-face feedback on my ideas is really why I am here, or why I like going to workshops in general — it’s going to be invaluable, particularly for a small college theorist like me, who sees so few people in his field on a regular basis. Plus, this pseudo-chaos stuff, as I understand it so far, is trememendously relevant to my paper with Arik, and the resulting argument about what exactly is going on in that system, which was ultimately the reason I came — the quickest way I know to learn something is to go to a workshop on it.

Playing a humanist

This term I am teaching only in Cross-Cultural Studies, doing a first-year seminar with 15 students. I’ve taught this course twice before, but this is the first time I don’t have a physics course as well, and so I am really going to be playing a humanist all term.

Today the group that’s teaching that course (there are multiple sections) is meeting to discuss the course, and I’m trying to inhabit that mode of being, and reminding myself of the goals for this course, etc.

I’ve decided that a good first-order/spherical cow approximation to the difference between teaching physics and teaching in CCST for me has been the following: In physics I work hard at teaching students how to recognize, set up, and solve certain kinds of problems, whether using Newton or Schrodinger or with statistical mechanics, etc. The focus, it would seem, is on the solving — perhaps because the problems we attack *have* solutions.

In CCST the goals, as I see it, it to get them to recognize that a problem exists at all, that they need to examine their assumptions, look beyond their certainties, and experience the shock of displacement from their original viewpoint; and then to try to transcend this shock. In this case the focus, it would seem, is on the problematizing and not so much on the solution (probably because the problems we address don’t have solutions as such). My struggle then is to get beyond just confusing the hell out of the students because that seems too easy and incomplete.

FSP on micro-inequities

This is a quick pointer to a superb post by Female Science Professor about micro-inequities. When discussing climate issues for underrepresented minorities in the sciences, skeptics sometimes wonder whether the environment is really all that bad in the absence of glaring racist or sexist incidents. FSP points out that often it’s the little things, perhaps not even noticed by members of the majority, that when encountered repeatedly by women in science (or other minoritites) “reinforce our sense of isolation, and together they send the strong message that women don’t get the same level of respect that men do, even when we are doing the same jobs.”

I can’t do the topic or the post justice, so head on over to FSP’s site and read it for yourself!

Anacapa meeting I missed

A report from Ian Durham in the “Quantum Times” (the newsreport from the APS Topical Group on Quantum Information)  on the Anacapa Society meeting I had to unfortunately miss:

Theorists gather; no one injured

A relatively new society, dedicated to theoretical and computational physicists at primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs), held its first workshop recently at Amherst College in central Massachusetts.  The Anacapa Society grew out of discussions among several KITP Scholars at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  The society’s mission is to promotes research in all areas of theoretical and computational physics at primarily undergraduate institutions. The Society facilitates professional contacts and collaboration, and supports the distinctive role theorists at undergraduate institutions can play in physics, the intellectual community, and the broader world.

While not strictly devoted to quantum information or quantum foundations, roughly one-third of workshop participants have, in some way, worked in these or related areas.  Participants included Bill Wootters (Williams), Lea Dos Santos (Yeshiva), Elizabeth Behrman (Wichita State), Peter Love (Haverford), Ian Durham (Saint Anselm), Don Spector (Hobart & William Smith), and the effervescent Herb Bernstein (Hampshire), among others. Despite the sweltering heat, the workshop was a definite success, particularly considering no one got seriously lost and no one blew anything up (a local experimentalist was on hand to make sure participants didn’t randomly press any buttons).

Further information on the society may be found at its website, http://anacapasociety.org/. -ITD

Expectations and the end of summer

In Nature earlier this month, Rachel Ivie reviewed the book “Lives in Science: How Institutions Affect Academic Careers” by Joseph C. Hermanowicz. Hermanowicz has traced the careers of physicists at different types of universities and compared their levels of satisfaction as they progress throughout their careers. I’ll admit I don’t think I’ll pick up the book myself, as Ivie notes that Hermanowicz assumes “that research is the highest form of scholarly endeavour. He refers to teaching as an undesirable activity–as ‘acceptable unproductivity.’” As someone for whom teaching is central to what I do, I doubt I can stomach a book by an author whose fundamental assumptions define what I do as unproductive. Nevertheless, there were several things in the book review that caught my attention. Hermanowicz describes faculty members as victims of a ‘con game’ in academia where graduate students “all start out expecting to achieve greatness; but few do so.” There is analysis of the disappointment that faculty members must face at different points in their careers as they realize that the recognition their scientific achievements will bring them does not match their expectations. As someone who had no aspirations to scientific fame in grad school, I wonder, do most graduate students really start their careers expecting they will achieve greatness?

The review did make me think about what my expectations were when I started grad school (definitely no aspirations of becoming a physics big shot). I went to grad school because I enjoyed physics, and I did expect getting a PhD would allow me to contribute to physics, but in my mind, contributing to physics encompassed many possibilities–contributing to the creation of new knowledge (research), to the development of new physicists (teaching), to the support of the physics community by society at large (policy and/or outreach), to the application of physics to products and services (industry).

At this point in my career, it’s not dashed expectations that frustrate me, but rather too many competing expectations–institutional expectations, the expectations of colleagues and collaborators, student expectations, and the expectations I have for myself. As a woman in physics, I also find myself facing challenges related to expectations that arise from societal gender schemas. As the summer draws to a close and I take stock of what I had hoped to accomplish and what I actually accomplished, I find the landscape of expectations to be particularly harsh and I’m trying to figure out how to balance various expectations in a sustainable and satisfying way for the coming academic year.