Physics Courses for Teachers
Have you always wanted to take the time to see how contemporary physics fits with the good old Newtonian physics you have known, loved, and taught? Have you wished for the opportunity to discuss real physics content with other teachers and experienced university faculty? Well now you can!

Who, What, Where, When and Why
How to Register
Course Philosophy
What Teachers are Saying about the Course

---

Who: High School teachers who teach physics or who are seeking to deepen their understanding of basic introductory physics topics. Registration is limited to no more than 15 students.

What: Distance learning course on introductory calculus-based Mechanics every spring, E&M every fall – topics will be similar to those in a traditional introductory calculus-based university physics course but will emphasize the atomic nature of matter in ways that are pedagogically novel. The courses will stress the use of fundamental principles to address novel problem situations. The programming language VPython will be used throughout the course to illustrate and examine key concepts. No prior programming experience is required since all necessary programming information will be provided as part of the course.More details on the philosophy of the course are available at the bottom of the page.

When: Mechanics every spring, E&M every fall semester. The courses will follow the NCSU calendar but since they are offered via distance learning, no set dates have been established other than the normal semester start and end dates. The fall semester starts around August 20, and the spring semester starts around January 10.

Where: Via NCSU distance learning, using lectures provided via DVD, online discussion and homework tools.

Why: To deepen your understanding of basic physics, to provide critical input into the development of this course for teachers, and to earn graduate credits. The courses may count for technology credit since the course makes heavy use of the programming language VPython.

How to Register:
The course title for Spring is PY 581, Matter & Interactions I for Secondary School Teachers, on mechanics. The course title for Fall is PY 582, Matter & Interactions II for Secondary School Teachers, on electricity and magnetism.

Participants will receive 3 graduate credits and a letter grade; enrollment is limited to 15 students.

The normal sequence is to take mechanics first, but a number of teachers have taken the electricity and magnetism course first, and it went well for them provided that they had a strong physics background and good calculus skills.

These graduate course will deal not only with physics content that is novel though accessible but also with the pedagogical implications of taking a modern view and emphasizing a small number of powerful fundamental principles.

At distance.ncsu.edu, click on the Apply & Enroll tab. If you have not previously taken a course at NCSU, choose to enroll as a NON-DEGREE STUDENT ("NDS") and take Distance Education courses.

After you are registered as a non-degree student, the next step is to register for the specific course PY 581 or PY 582, which you do by going to www.ncsu.edu and clicking MYPACK PORTAL. Log in with your new NCSU login and access course registration information.

Admission to these courses requires instructor permission, and at a certain point in the registration process you will not be able to proceed without obtaining that permission. You need to email Dr. Keith Weninger (Keith_Weninger@ncsu.edu) for the spring semester (PY 581, mechanics) or Dr. Laura Clarke (Laura_Clarke@ncsu.edu) for the fall semester (PY 582, E&M) of your intent to register. They will in turn inform the distance education group that you are a teacher who is eligible to participate.

---

Matter & Interactions (Spring/Fall):
A modern course in physics for high school teachers

Matter & Interactions is a modern two-semester physics curriculum and textbook developed by Prof. Ruth Chabay and Prof. Bruce Sherwood, emeritus professors in the Department of Physics at NCSU (see http://matterandinteractions.org). PY 581 and PY 582 are distance learning versions of the Matter & Interactions curriculum designed for in-service high school physics teachers. Mechanics is taught in the spring and electricity and magnetism in the fall. While the recommended sequence is to start with mechanics, physics teachers have found it feasible to take electricity and magnetism first if they have a strong physics background and good calculus skills. The intent is not to train teachers in how to teach this college-level curriculum in high school but rather to enhance teachers’ physics culture, by offering a broad, deep, and contemporary approach to physics which can enhance their approaches to their own teaching. This course will be of particular interest to any teacher interested in new insights into contemporary physics and novel physics pedagogy.

Fundamental principles: Physicists place great emphasis on the “reductionist” nature of their science, that starting from a few powerful fundamental principles such as the energy principle one can analyze a very broad range of complex real-world phenomena. Despite this shared viewpoint, most physics curricula inadvertently encourage students to view the subject as one in which there is a huge number of special-case formulas, one for each specific situation. As a result, students come to believe that their task is to plug given numbers into specified formulas, and they rarely encounter a problem that hasn’t already been worked out in detail for them in the textbook. Matter & Interactions strongly emphasizes starting all analyses from fundamental principles, thus empowering students to attack novel situations, not just plug numbers into known solutions.

Atoms: The atomic nature of matter is constantly emphasized throughout the curriculum, and macro-micro connections are continually made. In addition to its intrinsic interest and importance, the emphasis on atoms facilitates integrating subjects that are usually kept completely separate. In the first semester, mechanics and thermal physics are intertwined, culminating in a completely accessible application of quantum statistical mechanics to the thermal properties of solids. In the second semester, electrostatics and circuits are unified thanks to an atomic point of view that makes it possible to understand with a deep sense of mechanism the behavior of DC and RC circuits, analyzed directly in terms of Coulomb’s law and the properties of conductors.

Modeling: In Matter & Interactions students encounter messy real-world situations to be analyzed by making a simplified physical model of the phenomenon, through approximations, simplifying assumptions, idealizations, and estimates. Such physical modeling is at the heart of contemporary physics but is nearly absent from most curricula, which unfortunately contributes to shaping student beliefs that physics is not applicable in the real world.

Computation: It used to be that physics could be characterized as experiment, theory, and their interplay. However, contemporary physics is experiment, theory, computation, and their interplay. Yet even someone with an undergraduate degree in physics may never have done any serious computational physics. In Matter & Interactions even those with no prior experience in programming quickly learn to write programs which produce navigable 3D animations, thanks to the novel VPython programming environment (http://vpython.org). For example, early in the mechanics semester students model a binary star system, with elliptical orbits. Early in the electricity and magnetism semester students write programs to visualize in 3D the electric field of a point charge, and of a dipole. After taking this course teachers will have the skills necessary for writing 3D programs to use for demonstration purposes in their own teaching.

Experiments: Experiments are integrated into the curriculum, often using very simple apparatus, with emphasis on contributing to conceptual development of the subject. The second semester features a desktop experiment kit with which it is possible to do electrostatic, circuit, and magnetism experiments at home.

Course format: The course is delivered in collaboration with DELTA, the distance learning branch of NCSU. Video lectures provided on DVD's include interactive elements in the form of questions to be answered by the viewer during the lecture, just as students responded in the original lecture by using electronic response systems. WebAssign is used for most homework assignments. An online forum brings participants together on a daily basis.

---

What teachers are saying about Matter and Interactions for Teachers:

I was very surprised at how effective a distance learning course could be! Despite the fact that at the time I was in a location with an eleven hour time difference from NCSU, I never felt that I was isolated or that I couldn’t get the help I needed. Indeed the course is so well designed that, despite the challenging level of the material, I never felt frustrated. I felt that the tasks we were given were always at an appropriate level. The instructor varied the level of the tasks so that we had both tasks that reinforced the concepts we were learning in a very concrete way and others that forced us to “stretch” our brains to make connections we hadn’t encountered earlier. The WebAssign problems had obviously been carefully designed as very few were “plug and chug.” The WebAssign problems required us to apply and connect concepts, explain our reasoning, and, sometimes, think hard about our own misconceptions. The programming language VPython was used as a tool for solving computationally complex problems—not just as an “extra” for us to “wow” our students by simulating demonstrations. The instructors are truly passionate in their belief that the introductory physics curriculum needs to be revised to include more twentieth century physics. They have succeeded in their endeavor with the design of this course—I learned more during this course than I ever did in any course on “modern” physics I took as an undergraduate. M. Booker, Fairfax VA

The Matter & Interactions courses for physics teachers were excellent. The emphasis on conceptual understanding of a few very powerful concepts and then problem solving from them, rather than numerous special case equations, was very helpful. It is something I am attempting to incorporate more in my own classes. Also, the 3D programming using VPython was very useful for visualizing these concepts, especially those associated with electric and magnetic fields. Taking these courses has helped me get approval for updating my physics computer lab; and I intend to have my students do some programming in VPython after the updated lab is complete. In addition, the emphasis on the connections between physics at the micro and macro levels was quite interesting. Along with the Arizona State Modeling Method, these courses are the best professional development I have experienced. I am so thankful that they are available in an online format. G. Hnilicka, Metamora IL

I took both Matter and Interactions I and II. The courses were FANTASTIC! It was great to see familar material like momentum, entropy, and circuits presented in a new light. It has closed some of the gaps in my thinking and forced me to think about things in new ways. Everything is well designed: the text, homework, labs, and computer programming assignments. This course was built with care from the ground up and it shows. F. Noschese, Cross River NY

Matter & Interactions was the best distance learning physics course I have taken. I have taken some other really good online courses, but Matter & Interactions is just that much better. First of all, I improved my understanding of the physics that I teach every day. Second, I am very glad I learned to program in VPython, which both gave me a better understanding of computer programming and debugging, and taught me the value of iterative calculations. I had 15 years of physics teaching experience when I took the course, and I was very pleased to increase my depth of knowledge! F. Poodry, West Chester PA

I loved Matter and Interactions II, and am looking forward to taking Matter & Interactions I. M&I II was without doubt the best organized, most clearly presented, and most content rich online course I have ever taken. As a matter of fact it was one of the best university level classes I have ever taken. The homework, video lectures, and textbook were tightly integrated and effective in delivering the content. The course substantially altered my view of many physical phenomena and changed the way I present some physics topics in my own classroom. The course requires dedicating a lot of time every week, but it is not excessive even when balancing family and work responsibilities. R. Levergood, Londonderry NH

During my graduate studies in physics I was required to take many online courses. Of the courses I took, Matter & Interactions is by far the most complete and thoroughly designed distance course I participated in. The DVD lectures and extensive web-assign practice as well as frequent contact from the instructor made the course a rich and valuable learning experience. I highly recommend the courses to any teacher. M. Christian, Berlin NY

Even though I have taught Physics AP for the past 15 years, patterns of my teaching style have been based primarily on the mode of how I initially learned physics 20 years ago. Matter & Interactions has provided me with a useful model that will allow me to begin teaching all levels of physics from the point of view of fundamental principles, rather than the process of searching to find the best equation for whatever information is given in the problem, providing little to no foundation of why or how these situations worked the way they do. I still need to practice more with the concepts developed, but Matter & Interactions will become for me another useful tool in my bag of pedagogy that works. W. Hamlin, Asheville NC

I have taken both Chemistry and Physics modeling classes which teach science pedagogy, and use both methods successfully in my high school classes (as measured by the Chemistry Concept Inventory and the Force Concept Inventory). Matter & Interations I is a great class for reinforcing your own fundamental understanding of physics concepts, and providing a second year high school physics course approach that treats all mechanics problems from one or more of three fundamental principles. It ties physics at the atomic level to physics at the real life level, and is taught online through a combination of video lectures, textbook, online homework, and tests. It is the best and most challenging class I have taken for years; I highly recommend it. I am going to take Matter & Interactions II in the fall. C. Hansen, Phoenix AZ

I found Matter & Interactions to be the most valuable academic experience I have had. I believe it has moved me from being someone who is capable of success with mechanics to someone who possesses a genuine mastery of the topic. This is by far the most coherent and unifying treatment of introductory physics that I have ever encountered. I feel that my words are incapable of expressing my enthusiasm and gratitude. J. Hoffman, Bellingham WA

The M&I course was the most stimulating professional development experience I've had in the last 15 years; as someone who has taught high school physics at a variety of levels (physics first through AP-C), I found myself continually challenged to rethink my familiar physical models and problem solving approaches. In many cases, this course solved "traditional" problems from entirely different premises or using novel but extremely powerful techniques. This is a demanding but outstanding course. M. Skinner, Pittsburgh PA

I really enjoy distance courses because they allow me to spend time learning when I can fit it into my schedule. I teach full time and run several academic clubs, so I have to plan carefully and budget my time. With a distance course, I can work on material when I am rested and able to concentrate on challenging coursework. The M&I course was a challenging course, and the instructor provided prompt, appropriate feedback. The format, which combined bulletin board discussions, web assigned homework, and video lectures was very effective at increasing my understanding of the mechanics of physics. C. Frame, Willow Spring NC

For more information, contact Dr. Keith Weninger (Keith_Weninger@ncsu.edu) for the spring semester (PY 581, mechanics) or Dr. Laura Clarke (Laura_Clarke@ncsu.edu) for the fall semester (PY 582, E&M).