PHYSICS & SOCIETY EDUCATION NEWSLETTER
_____________________________________________________________
SUMMER 2003 MEETING IN MADISON
Our P&S Education group was directly responsible for organizing two invited/contributed sessions, and a crackerbarrel session. There were also related workshops on "Energy in the 21st Century" and "Clarifying Energy Concepts," and a contributed session on "Physics and Civic Engagement," that members of our group played major roles in. Our invited/contributed sessions "Physics and Society Education: The Environment and Other Societal Issues" organized by Jane Flood, and "Fusion and Other Energy Issues" organized by Gordon McIntosh, were very well attended and raised lots of interesting discussion from the audience. Our crackerbarrel session, led by Jane Flood, was also well attended (as crackerbarrel sessions go), and featured plenty of lively discussion that is summarized below.
SUMMARY OF CRACKERBARREL SESSION, SUMMER 2003 MEETING IN MADISON
NOTE: The individual comments recorded here do not necessarily represent the views of our group, or of most crackerbarrel attendees.
Attendance was about 25, most of whom joined in the vigorous discussion. Jane Flood did her usual inspiring job of organizing and leading the discussion.
Jane reviewed the P&S Education sessions at the Madison meetings, and then asked for suggestions as to how our sessions should be organized at the Summer 2004 Meeting in Sacramento. Suggestions: Robert Noun, director of communications and congressional liaison activities for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, should be invited to present a plenary talk. Due to the proximity of Lawrence-Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), there should be an arms control session and speakers from LLNL should be invited. Sidney Drell, prominent arms control physicist, should be invited to give a plenary talk. Thus our contributions to the Sacramento meeting should comprise our usual invited/contributed "Physics and Society Education" session, an invited/contributed "Arms Control" session, suggestions (to AAPT meeting organizers) of 2 invited plenary speakers (Noun, Drell), and our usual Crackerbarrel Session. Jane volunteered to organize the arms control session, but no volunteers were forthcoming for any of the other tasks. [Later, Al Bartlett suggested that we propose Professor Tom Cahill of U Cal Davis, an air pollution specialist, to speak on air contamination around the destroyed World Trade Towers.]
AIP (Am Inst of Physics) is making 2005 a special international "Einstein year" or "physics year" in honor of the 3 groundbreaking papers Einstein published in 1905. It was pointed out that our P&S education group could fit into this by organizing an Einstein-related activity for the summer 2005 meeting. Einstein was of course active in several social causes including the initial suggestion to build a nuclear weapon, and post-war efforts to control it.
There was some discussion of efforts to "infuse" societal topics into physics courses, especially the jam-packed college-level algebra-based and calculus-based introductory physics courses. It was pointed out that an "energy first" approach to introductory physics, that devoted far less than the usual attention to Newtonian mechanics, could help by allowing more time and flexibility and by emphasizing the socially important topics of energy and thermodynamics. Another comment was that physics education research is beginning to focus more on alternative topics such as modern physics and its societal implications. Others chimed in that there should be less emphasis on traditional Newtonian mechanics. Somebody suggested starting the introductory course with electricity and magnetism. Another suggested that there should be increased emphasis on history (and the related societal aspects) in introductory courses. One person stated that physics teachers are too reticent in discussing values-related issues such as societal topics, and too reluctant to encourage and educate students in making ethical decisions about environmental and other issues.
There was a long discussion on how to discuss controversial issues in science classes, and why it seems to be taboo to bring up such issues in class. Here are some of the suggested answers: Encourage students to discuss and write essays on such topics. Teachers should not try to give answers to controversial issues, but they should encourage rational consideration and rational conclusions about such issues, based on evidence. Teachers should not be afraid to present the scientific consensus on controversial issues when a reasonably clear scientific consensus exists; examples include the evolution/creationism debate and global warming. Science teachers need to be better leaders of class discussions. When there is no scientific consensus, teachers should present the evidence on both sides of a controversial issue, somewhat "in the style of lawyers on both sides." We should always emphasize that science is never certain, science can be wrong, and science has been wrong in the past. We should not be afraid to get into the policy side of controversial issues, somewhat as the Union of Concerned Scientists gets into the policy side of issues such as ballistic missile defense.
TOWARD THE SUMMER 2004 SACRAMENTO MEETING
Our group's informal "executive committee" (Jane Flood, Art Hobson, Harvey Leff, Gordon McIntosh, John Roeder) has decided to somewhat reduce our group's contribution to next summer's meeting. We plan a single invited/contributed session, focused on but not necessarily limited to, arms control issues (see the crackerbarrel discussion, above), and our usual crackerbarrel session. We also hope to suggest one or two plenary speakers (again, see the crackerbarrel discussion). We will not try to organize a second invited/contributed session, because nobody has volunteered to do the organizing and also because in the two past years we have had barely enough contributed papers to form two invited/contributed sessions. We have excellent, enthusiastic, large audiences for all of our sessions, but we don't have enough live bodies who are actually willing to contribute a paper, or organize a session.
PLEASE BECOME A LIVE BODY. SUGGESTIONS: VOLUNTEER TO LEAD THE CRACKERBARREL DISCUSSION AT THE SACRAMENTO MEETING. COME TO THE CRACKERBARREL SESSION IN SACRAMENTO AND VOLUNTEER TO PLAY A ROLE IN THE SUMMER 2005 MEETING. CONTRIBUTE A PAPER AT OUR INVITED/CONTRIBUTED SESSION IN SACRAMENTO. OUR P&S EDUCATION GROUP HAS AN IMPORTANT AND USEFUL ROLE TO PLAY WITHIN AAPT, AND MANY AAPT MEMBERS ARE ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT OUR ACTIVITIES, BUT WE CAN ONLY PLAY THAT ROLE IF OTHERS ARE WILLING TO HELP.
NEWS OF THE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE EDUCATION FOR THE PUBLIC
The Committee on Science Education for the Public is our "parent committee," in the sense that a representative from our group attends that committee's meetings and keeps them in touch with what we are doing. CSEP discusses and approves (or disapproves) our suggested AAPT sessions, and sponsors those sessions. Our group's representative to this committee is Gordon McIntosh. He reports that the committee approved our session, and our workshop for the Sacramento meeting.
PHYSOC EMAIL LIST
One of the pluses of the Madison meeting for our group was the addition of about 50 people to our "physoc" email list. These names were obtained by circulating a sign-up sheet at our two invited/contributed sessions and our crackerbarrel session. We now have 182 email list members. We lose several members every year simply because they change addresses and don't tell us. If your email address changes, PLEASE LET ME KNOW (ahobson@uark.edu).
To send an email message to everybody on the list, address it to: <physoc@listserv.uark.edu>. Think before you hit "Send," because all 182 list members will receive your message.
The physoc list is for all of us. Use it for anything you want to share with the group: alert us to publications or talks, alert us to relevant news, send a copy of your own article or letter to the editor, ask the group for information, etc.
If you know anybody who wants to join this list, ask them to email me at ahobson@uark.edu (do NOT email physoc for this), with: last name, first name, <email address>. OR they could sign in at http://listserv.uark.edu and type in "physoc" as the list name. I also pass around a physoc sign-up sheet at our sessions at the summer meetings.
--