William G. Sturrus DUE 9552374 Youngstown St University FY1995 $ 19,388 Youngstown, OH 44555 ILI - Instrumentation Project: Physics Title: Restructuring the Physics Lab: A Remote Interactive Approach Traditional introductory physics laboratories require the student to take specified data and perform specified calculations. While this is an efficient method for introducing large numbers of students to science in the brief time allotted to laboratory study each week, it omits important aspects of scientific research, including preliminary analysis of a problem, design of methods for probing the problem, group interaction and discipline, and discovery by the student. It is planned to restructure the mechanics laboratory, the first in a three-course laboratory sequence for beginning students. The current nine traditional experiments will be replaced by three, each focusing on one of the three fundamental approaches to mechanics: force and motion, energy, and momentum. Each experiment will continue over a period of three weeks, during which students will target their own conceptions of the topic through an initial computer-assisted assessment, will then decide how best to test their conceptions using portable data collection hardware outside of the idealized classroom setting, will perform their tests using subjects and environments familiar from everyday experience, and report back to the laboratory to analyze results and repeat the assessment of their conceptions, comparing initial conceptions with final conclusions. Such student-initiated comparisons, coupled with evaluations of corresponding performance in lecture courses, will provide a basis for examining the effectiveness of the approach. While students will work in groups of three, interaction among groups will be facilitated using data from one group to challenge the others to provide interpretations. This new remote-interactive approach to the beginning laboratory is designed to produce meaningful thought by the student rather than learning by rote, and is expected to increase student understanding of basic physics as well as produce in the student a better appreciation both of physics in particular and the scientific approach in general.
