Dawn C. Meredith, Associate Professor of Physics, UNH

Instrumentation and Laboratory Improvement

NSF Grant 9750830

Discovery-Based Labs for Calculus-Based Introductory Physics

Original Abstract

There is evidence that most students do not greatly increase their understanding of physical concepts through the traditional verification/recipe laboratories found in most introductory physics courses. Thorton, Sokoloff, and Laws have created a series of discovery-based, microcomputer-based laboratories that have shown to increase conceptual understanding of students greatly: Tools for Scientific Thinking (TST), RealTime Physics (RTP), and Workshop Physics (WP). While these materials present a significant improvement over the traditional laboratories, none fits the needs of the university exactly. WP is calculus based, but requires changes that can not be implemented (i.e., abandoning lecture altogether and working with students in a laboratory setting with a high teacher-to-student ratio). TST and RTP allow the laboratory to change independently of the lecture, but are not calculus based, and are written for a wide audience (high school through college). This project modifies the existing curricular materials in TST and RTP to make them more appropriate for this introductory calculus-based course for engineers and scientists. The project adds calculus applications, increases the level of difficulty slightly, adds kinesthetic experiences and computer simulations, adds exercises that help students synthesize information and create logical arguments, and reorganizes the laboratory to provide better coordination with lectures. These changes are made without changing the basic philosophy of the curricular materials: students must construct their own understanding by making predictions, by testing predictions, and by focusing on concepts instead of equations.

Changes in Original Focus

When the Tutorials in Introductory Physics by Lillian McDermott, Peter Shaffer and the Physics Education Group at the University of Washington became available, my focused changed a bit. These tutorials accomplished many of the goals I had in mind, particularly helping students develop concepts and create logical arguments. However, many of the tutorials are paper and pencil worksheets, not labs. Therefore my focus was changed to write labs that complimented the tutorials. This included adding kinesthetic experiences, more calculus, and computer simulations.

The worksheets and how you might use them

The product of this grant is a set of worksheets. From observation, I know that worksheets by one instructor rarely get used as is in another instrutors classroom, but are still useful as the core of a worksheet for another instructor. Below are links to each of my worksheets, including in pdf format (readable with the freeware Adobe Acrobat Reader ) and as LaTeX sourcecode. (LaTeX is a text formatting program.) This is the source code that I used to create the formatted worksheets, and will probably only be of use to you if you already use LaTex. Feel free to use these as is or modified in your own classroom, but please give this grant credit as appropriate.

In the pages below I have given references to the physics education research in cases where I am aware of relevent research. If you are interested in delving into this literature, there is a recent resource letter that will help: McDermott, L. C. and E. F. Redish (1999). Resource Letter on Physics Education Research. American Journal of Physics 67(9): 755 - 767. Also, Prof. Redish has a website with list of physics education research papers of interest to physics educators.

Much of the equipment that we use is MBL or CBL (microcomputer based lab or calculator based lab). Check out either Vernier or Pasco websites for more information.

Because some of these worksheets were written for a combined calculus/physics course, the level of calculus may be a bit higher than is appropriate for some students. In particular, in the RC circuits students are asked to solve the differential equation. However, in each case, the students should be able to do the conceptual part of the worksheet use basic calculus concepts.

Information on Individual Worksheets

  • Acceleration in one dimension
  • Projectile Motion
  • Vector Addition
  • Force Table
  • Newton's Second Law: F=ma taken from work by Prof. Dewey Dykstra of Boise State University. While this is not written by me, I include it here because I found it very useful and more educators should know about it!
  • Center of Mass
  • Moment of Inertia
    • This is an open-ended lab designed and tested by my colleague Prof. Robert Simpson.
  • Torque Kinesthetic Play
  • Wave Speed
  • Symmetry and Gauss' Law
  • Electric Field Lines
  • RC circuit

    • More Information

    Link to Discovery Based Labs for Calculus-Based Introductory Physics. Contributed Talk, AAPT Conference, Summer 1999.

    Link to Project Information Resource Page at NSF

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