Related papers: Informal Socialization in Physics Training
This paper gives an introduction to some of the statistical physics problems which appear in the study of structural glasses. It is a shortened and updated version of a more detailed review paper which has appeared in cond-mat/0005173.
Since 2006, the Pigelleto's Summer School of Physics is an important appointment for orienting students toward physics. It is organized as a full immersion school on actual topics in physics or in fields rarely pursued in high school, i.e.…
A simple model to help students see the connections between a physics course and their engineering major is described. "Bridging" had positive effects on performance, attitude, and motivation, as measured by grade analyses, surveys, and…
This paper provides an overview and critical analysis on the modeling and applications of the dynamics of human crowds, where social interactions can have an important influence on the behavioral dynamics of the crowd viewed as a living,…
For many students, college physics courses have little or even negative impact on their beliefs about the connection between physics and the everyday world. One way to help students see this connection is to incorporate analysis of science…
One finding of cognitive research is that people do not automatically acquire usable knowledge by spending lots of time on task. Because students' knowledge hierarchy is more fragmented, "knowledge chunks" are smaller than those of experts.…
About two-third of Physics PhDs establish careers outside of academia and the national laboratories in areas like Software, Instrumentation, Data Science, Finance, Healthcare, Journalism, Public Policy and Non-Governmental Organization.…
We discuss the fundamental principles underlying the current physical theories and the prospects of further improving their knowledge through experiments in space.
Over the past 25 years, I have been involved in some intriguing developments in the foundations of physics, exploring the quantum reality problem, the relationship between quantum theory and gravity and the interplay between consciousness…
This essay discusses the effectiveness of a graduate course for physics students, with a course goal to write a publishable article on a modern research topic (graphene). I analyze the tools used to this end, which included Web 2.0 methods,…
Too often, physics students are beset by feelings of failure and isolation rather than experiencing the creative joys of discovery that physics has to offer. This dissertation research was founded on the desire of a teacher to make physics…
Our main goal is to develop plans to increase physics enrollment. Once again we thoroughly analyze the problem from the beginning and reach the conclusion that the most appropriate starting point in this direction should be to look into…
Upper-division physics students spend much of their time solving problems. In addition to their basic skills and background, their epistemic framing can form an important part of their ability to learn physics from these problems.…
Studying how social contexts shape technology interactions and how we experience them is hard. One challenge is that social contexts are very dynamic and shaped by the situated practices of everyone involved. As a result, the same…
Modeling Instruction (MI), an active-learning introductory physics curriculum, has been shown to improve student academic success. Peer-to-peer interactions play a salient role in the MI classroom. Their impact on student interest and…
This Thesis is devoted to the analysis of entanglement in relevant physical systems. Entanglement is the conducting theme of this research, though I do not dedicate to a single topic, but consider a wide scope of physical situations. I have…
National studies conducted over many years show that, while most Americans are interested in science and support federal funding of scientific research, the scientific literacy of the public is very low. Why this situation exists and who is…
A central goal of Introductory Physics for the Life Sciences (IPLS) is to prepare students to use physics to model and analyze biological situations, a skill of increasing importance for their future studies and careers. Here we report our…
The absence of women among academic staff in physics is in the focus of our research. To explore the causes of this gender imbalance, we conducted a nationwide representative survey among Ph.D. students and interviews with Ph.D. students…
We present an intermediate-level course on sustainable physics, which combines lectures and student projects. Sustainable physics concepts are progressively introduced through both a global and a specialized perspective: climate change and…