Related papers: Putnam Physics Competition: a suggestion
This Snowmass21 Contributed Paper addresses the structural changes that need to occur in the many groups and organizations that intersect with the US particle physics community to enable impactful public engagement to flourish. The impetus…
When funding public goods, resources are often allocated via mechanisms that resemble contests, especially in the case of research grants. A common critique of these contests is that they induce ``too much'' effort from participants. This…
This article was written at the invitation of Current Science to explain the history and Science behind this year's Nobel prize in Physics. The article is aimed at a general audience and provides a popular account and perspective on the…
A difficult challenge in physics education is to design professional development programs for teachers, which can lead to fundamental changes in their practise. We report all activities for physics teachers in the context of the National…
The IPPOG and U.S. Particle Physics Masterclasses took place worldwide in March 2011. For the first time, all masterclasses used real LHC data. Students in the U.S. Masterclasses (that included participants in several countries outside the…
In teaching the physical sciences, a significant challenge lies in the student's tendency to consider the scientific world and the "real" world as separate. For example, Newton's 1st Law of Motion states that an object in motion remains in…
It would seem that the present dry economic times impose a very precise focus for science in general and physics in particular: research, possibly of applied type. However in doing so two basic pillars of a healthy future for science are…
A recent high school graduate addresses the salient question: Should individualism or collectivism be encouraged in physics students? (Physics Today, Points of View, October 2013)
It is a well-studied notion that women are under-represented in the physical sciences, with a "leaky pipeline" metaphor describing how the number of women decreases at higher levels in academia[1,2]. It is unclear, however, where the major…
Laboratory experiments provide a valuable complement to explore the fundamental physics of space plasmas without the limitations inherent to spacecraft measurements. Specifically, experiments overcome the restriction that spacecraft…
This report summarizes changes in federal research funding to the medical physics community between FY24 and FY25. By linking the AAPM membership database with NIH RePORTER records, we quantified the distribution of NIH funding for projects…
The transition of many educational activities from in-presence to online, due to the Covid-19 emergency, has caused various difficulties to students, especially with regards to maintaining concentration. Even and especially in online mode,…
To give teenagers a new, everyday perspective on STEM topics, we use particle physics as our main topic to engage young students. Our strategy is designed to demystify particle physics, making it more accessible and attractive early in high…
Physics education research has probed for the relevance of physics in students' everyday lives. Attitudinal and epistemological surveys have asked students if they think of or use physics in their daily lives. We have previously documented…
Physical laws are strikingly simple, yet there is no a priori reason for them to be so. I propose that nomic realists -- Humeans and non-Humeans -- should recognize simplicity as a fundamental epistemic guide for discovering and evaluating…
I briefly summarize the prospects for extending our understanding of physics beyond the standard model within the next five years.
This article presents an overview of neutrino physics research, with highlights on the physics goals, results and interpretations of the current neutrino experiments and future directions and program. It is not meant to be a comprehensive…
The ProAm effort in modern astronomy and astrophysics is now a reality. The achievements of amateur astronomers throughout the early history of astronomy are well known. However, during the 20th century, the high specialisation and the…
Supersymmetry remains compelling theory over 30 years in spite of lack of its discovery. It could be already near the corner our days, therefore present and upcoming experiments are crucial for constraining or even discovery of the…
Much of Mathematics, and therefore Physics as well, have been limited by four rather consequential restrictions. Two of them are ancient taboos, one is an ancient and no longer felt as such bondage, and the fourth is a surprising omission…