When was the last time you attended an AAPT meeting? Two years ago? Ten years ago? Never? However long it's been, I want to formally invite you to attend the 2016 Winter Meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers in New Orleans, LA.
I am always surprised when I meet a physicist who does a lot of teaching but has never been to an AAPT meeting. Whether you teach at a university, a two- or four-year college, or a high school, you will find much that is useful and interesting at an AAPT meeting.
Even more surprising is when I meet a physicist who teaches yet is not even a member of AAPT. Sadly, I am finding this experience to be more commonplace than it used to be. Indeed, most of the members of my own department are not AAPT members today, whereas 20 years ago everyone was an AAPT member. Given that teaching is the main priority at my institution, I find it bewildering that my colleagues are not members of the only national organization whose main focus is physics education. Anyone who believes in the importance of physics education should be supporting AAPT through membership. Member dues support the publication of this journal as well as The Physics Teacher, a variety of other published resources for physics educators, national AAPT meetings, smaller conferences and workshops, grants and scholarships, plus competitions and awards that promote the teaching and learning of physics.
But I digress. The point of today's editorial is not to promote AAPT membership but to tempt you to come to an AAPT meeting. Perhaps after experiencing what an AAPT meeting has to offer it will not be necessary for me to further prod you into becoming a member of this wonderful organization.
AAPT meetings include sessions focusing on introductory physics, upper-division physics, labs and demonstrations, astronomy, physics in society, the needs of new physics teachers, and many other topics. The numerous sessions focusing on physics education research are a great way to become more aware of some of the difficulties students have learning physics, and to find out ways to address these difficulties. Even if you have been teaching for many years, there is something to learn at every AAPT meeting. And of course, you may have a trick or two up your sleeve that you'd like to share.
In addition to the many smaller sessions, each AAPT meeting includes several interesting plenary and award sessions. Some of the most memorable talks I have ever heard have been at these sessions. A few past speakers who come to mind immediately are Brian Greene, who taught us about the multiverse in his talk Cosmology, Dark Energy, and String Theory (Winter 2012); Alan Nathan, who showcased the physics of baseball in You Can Observe a Lot by Watching (Summer 2013); and Donald Olson, whose talk Celestial Sleuth: Using Physics and Astronomy to Solve Mysteries in Art, History, and Literature (Summer 2014) detailed (among other things) how he determined precisely where and when (down to the minute) Ansel Adams stood while taking his famous photograph Autumn Moon.
If you have attended national meetings of the American Physical Society (APS), which can have nearly 10,000 attendees, you may be happy to learn that national AAPT meetings are nearly an order of magnitude smaller. The sessions tend to be smaller, it is not so difficult to find your way around, and it is easier to meet new people and connect with valued colleagues.
Every AAPT meeting begins with one or two days of workshops: instructional sessions that typically last four hours each, where you can learn and practice a new skill or technique under the mentorship of experts. At a workshop you might learn new ways to teach general relativity, or how to incorporate interactive video into courses, or how to create web simulations, or how to bring research-based reforms into a course for life-science majors. It was at an AAPT meeting in 2006 when I attended a workshop on single-photon quantum mechanics experiments, and this led to incorporating such experiments into our department's sophomore-level “modern physics” course.1 (One of the real downsides of being editor of AJP is that I have been unable to participate in workshops because they conflict with the AAPT Executive Board meetings, which I am now required to attend.)
I hope by now you are at least a bit tempted to come to the next AAPT meeting. Did I mention the meeting is in New Orleans? In January?
If you are still not convinced that an AAPT meeting would be worth your while, let me mention one more thing. If you are a regular reader of AJP then you might be interested in a dedicated session at the New Orleans meeting to highlight a few of the many interesting papers published during the past year or so. The Wonderful World of AJP will feature four speakers from four different countries:
Jacco Snoeijer (the Netherlands) will discuss The Physics of the Granite Sphere Fountain,2 explaining how a 27-ton chunk of granite can be made to float on a thin film of water;
Wolfgang Rueckner (United States) will discuss The Puzzle of the Steady-State Rotation of a Reverse Sprinkler,3 describing his thorough experimental investigation of this decades-old conundrum;
Laurent Courbin (France) will discuss The Creation and Rupture of Minimal Surfaces Made of Soap Films,4 providing an in-depth look into the stability of these beautiful shapes; and
Alexander Klotz (Canada) will discuss Falling Through Earth: A Guided Tour,5 providing a refreshing new look at this standard textbook problem.
I, for one, am really looking forward to this session. If you have not had a chance to read these articles, I highly recommend you do so. You won't be disappointed. And if you are too busy to read these articles right now, you can bring along your copies of these AJP issues and read them on your way to New Orleans.
The 2016 Winter Meeting will take place from January 9–12. The latest updates, including hotel and travel information, can be found by visiting the AAPT website at <www.aapt.org>. Whether you are interested in the workshops, the plenaries, the AJP session described above, or perhaps just enjoying the music and food in New Orleans while connecting with other physicists who have a keen interest in teaching, I hope you will consider adding this conference to your schedule.
