This semester, I have decided to finally take the plunge for migrating the Physics 132 textbook from the pdf generated by the OpenStaxCNX platform to a much-easier-to-edit format of Pressbooks and simultaneously moving the online preparatory homework from Pearson’s MasteringPhysics (to which I will not link, search for it if you are interested) to Edfinity. This is quite a journey and a lot of work, but I think it will pay off.
NYTimes Opinion 11 December 2019 – How Professors Help Rip Off Students: Textbooks are too expensive.
Another interesting article from the NYTimes related to our work here at the physedgroup. This most recent article talks about the fact that textbook prices have increased over 1000% since the 1970’s! The article specifically talks about economics, but many of the details mentioned are relevant to physics as well: $250 books, with $50 access codes for homework systems, all familiar refrains for undergraduates taking physics courses.
This Open Phys site is meant to be a way for medical professionals to learn more about modern physics, specifically those that underpin the MRI. However, what is really interesting about the site is its structure: the fundamental topics are displayed as tiles.
The main page of Open Physics presents the various topics as tiles. Students can, after exploring the “User Guide” can proceed in any order they wish.
When the student selects a topic, they are directed to a map with the information. This structure is more flexible than a standard book as there is no requirement for a linear progression. I feel that for some topics, such a non-linear presentation is particularly useful; I remember as a student having trouble with statistical mechanics because, to me, it felt very non-linear. My study strategies involved outlines – a very linear organization. This method worked great for electricity and magnetism which, I and every textbook I have ever seen, feels has a very linear progression. However, this method failed me in statistical mechanics. Only when I took the course again in graduate school, and made a map at the end of the semester did the material “click.” As an instructor, I have drawn on that experience and sometimes suggested to students that a map may be helpful. I never know which topics a given student will see as linear, as it depends upon their own perceptions and educational background.
The map of content for the “Electronic Structure of the Atom” unit
In addition to content presentation, this site makes use of multi-modal presentation, mixing videos and text, as well as H5P to incorporate formative quizzing.
I really like the idea of this method of presentation and the fact that this source code for this site is on GitHub under Creative Commons Attribution 4. 0 License makes it easy to adapt and incorporate into my own materials. I do wonder, however, about the accessibility of this format. The multiple points of access and variety of paths through the material would seem to be a plus, but the format could also be confusing. Moreover, how effectively could someone navigate this site if they use a screen reader or are reliant on input devices other than a mouse? These would be important questions to explore before incorporating it into my curriculum.
One-half of this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics went to Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz for their discovery of 51 Pegasi B – the first planet observed to orbit a sun-like star other than our own. While the work marked a turning point in our understanding of the Universe, more than 4,000 such extrasolar planets have now been discovered, I think that some honest comments about a common experience in science made by Dr. Queloz deserve some attention as well.
The discovery of 51 Pegasi B was during Dr. Queloz’s Ph.D. work, Dr. Mayor was his advisor. At the time, 1992, the only planet outside of our solar system that had been found was around a pulsar: the rapidly spinning ember of a dead large star. The wobble caused by the planet in the otherwise regular radiation emissions of the pulsar made it comparatively easy to detect. However, the probability of life as we know it on such a planet is exceptionally low. One common attitude in the community at that time, according to Dr. Fischer of Yale, was that “Maybe most stars don’t form with planets and our solar system is unusual and life is incredibly rare.”
It was pretty clear I had no hope
Dr. Queloz describing beginning his Ph.D. work which ultimately won the 2019 Nobel Physics Prize
Thus, while starting a Ph.D. to search for extrasolar planets, Dr. Queloz was not expecting to find any, “It was pretty clear, I had no hope,” he said to the New York Times. Part of this hopelessness was rooted in the expectations of the time that any planets whose effects would be large enough to detect would orbit at such a distance that many years would be required to detect them. For example, Jupiter’s impact on our star has a period of over 11 years.
However, I know that these feelings of hopelessness are actually a quite common expectation of many students at the beginning of their Ph.D.’s independent of the particular field of physics. I know I had them. Here you are, joining this community of brilliant, and exceptionally hard working people, and you think to yourself, “what are the odds that I will find something that these other people, who have been working at this potentially their entire lives have not?” These feelings can be quite daunting.
Even when Dr. Queloz did find evidence for 51 Pegasi B in 1994, he was reluctant to show the results to Dr. Mayor, his Ph.D. advisor who was at the time on sabbatical half-way around the world. The evidence pointed to a planet unlike anything in our solar system: a huge Jupiter sized planet that is so close to its parent star that it orbits in only 4 days (Mercury, in inner-most planet in our solar system by comparison, takes about 88 days). Furthermore, the models of planet formation prevalent at the time suggested that forming such a large planet so close to a star should be impossible.
Again, doubt crept into Dr. Queloz’s mind. Which was more likely, that he had found something completely new far faster than anyone had predicted, or that, as a new student he had made a mistake? According to the New York Times:
Dr. Queloz did not feel ecstatic, but rather ashamed, certain that something was wrong with the instrument or his software.
“I really panicked at that time,” Dr. Queloz said. “I didn’t talk to [Dr. Mayor] at all.”
I really feel that this is a set of emotions that all students have at some point: “I must be wrong,” “my advisor is the expert,” “who am I to…” Getting over these feelings is I guess part of maturing into an independent scientist.
In this case, the results were real and 24 years after their announcement in 1995, resulted in a Nobel Prize. I think acknowledging that most most Ph.D. theses don’t follow such a trajectory is important. Instead, we as Ph.D. students add our small bit to the cumulative knowledge of humanity and, perhaps more importantly, learn to become independent scientists along the way. However, the feelings expressed publicly by Dr. Queloz are, I think, common, and I hope that through expressing them we can further debunk the “super-brillant professor” stereotype, which can exacerbate equity issues in science according to Leslie, S.-J., Cimpian, A., Meyer, M., & Freeland, E. (2015). Expectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines. Science, 347(6219), 262–265. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1261375.
