MIT is conducting a two-week summer workshop for college and university physics faculty to exchange ideas and designs for advanced pedagogical experiments in modern physics and to study the experiments currently in use in the MIT Junior Physics Laboratory (the third-year course in experimental physics required for MIT physics majors) for the purpose of evaluating them for possible reproduction and use in similar courses at their home institutions. The MIT Junior Lab experiments are designed for students who have completed an introductory course in modern physics and are taking concurrently an introductory course in quantum mechanics. The experiments provide hands-on experience with the phenomena of particle, nuclear, atomic, condensed matter, statistical, and astro-physics. The summer workshop will assist in the national effort to improve the quality of undergraduate physics education. This project responds to a suggestion, put forward at the Santa Fe Workshop on Undergraduate Curriculum Development (June 1-3, 1990), that universities with excellent advanced undergraduate laboratory courses should organize summer workshops like the current one.
