Undergraduate education for NIRT: DMR-0210717
Two PIs, Jim Freericks and Amy Liu, have created and taught a materials
science and quantum mechanics course for nonscientists called
The Quantum World Around Us.
The course uses Richard Feynman's path-integral approach to develop
a model for quantum mechanical systems and then applies them to a wide
range of condensed matter physics including magnetism, optical properties,
superconductivity, lasers, etc. As part of the course, we include
peer based tutorials that focus on conceptual issues. The tutorials
consist of guided worksheets that students work on with instructors
who engage them in semi-Socratic dialog. We employ an undergraduate
student as a peer instructor in this course.
This course has recently been selected as a freshman seminar
in Georgetown
College. It is part of a year-long, four-course, program for freshman that
links science course to philosophy courses each semester. Taught in the
spring semester, this course will be linked with a philosophy of quantum
mechanics course, that will deepen and broaden the education of the students.
We have also begun to engage in a project to assess the long-term learning
of students who have taken the course. We have the students read a
Scientific American article that describes a modern quantum mechanical
experiment, and then interview them to assess their understanding of
the article. The chosen article is sufficiently complex, that most people
who do not know quantum mechanics will not be able to describe how
the experiment works, so it will be able to assess the amount of learning
retained by the student volunteers. We also relate the principles of the
article to those of the course to further examine retention. This case
study is being performed in collaboration with Stamatis Vokos of Seattle
Pacific University. To date, we have completed five interviews, and plan
additional ones during the remainder of the grant.
Last modified August 5, 2005.
Jim Freericks, Professor of Physics