Approximately one year ago, I invited readers to attend the 2016 Winter Meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) in New Orleans, LA. Although I may never know whether my invitation actually swayed anyone into attending this meeting, I like to think that a few people were inspired to make the trip and that many more were at least tempted. Today, I invite you to attend the 2017 AAPT Winter Meeting in Atlanta, GA.
Whether you are a longstanding AAPT member, a lapsed member, or someone who has never been a member of AAPT, I urge you to seriously consider attending an AAPT meeting on a regular basis. If you believe in the importance of physics education—and if you are reading this editorial then it is pretty clear that you do—then you owe it to yourself to take advantage of the many wonderful opportunities that exist at an AAPT meeting to help you become a better teacher. As mentioned in my previous invitation, “[e]ven if you have been teaching for many years, there is something to learn at every AAPT meeting.” Tempting as it may be, rather than repeating the many benefits available at an AAPT meeting, I encourage you to peruse this previous invitation.1
And if the benefits of attending an AAPT meeting are not quite enough to lure you into adding yet another conference to your busy schedule, then perhaps I can at least appeal to your sense of duty as a physicist and an educator to help support the only national organization whose main focus is physics education through an AAPT membership. After all, your membership dues directly support the publication of this journal, in addition to supporting national meetings and the many other resources available to physics educators (including publication of The Physics Teacher, AAPT's other major journal).
The 2017 Winter Meeting will take place from February 18–21 in Atlanta, GA. For many, the mild Atlanta temperatures at this time of the year will offer a respite from a lengthy winter. Although winter has yet to descend on us in Pennsylvania, I know that I personally will be looking forward to the spring-like temperatures come February. To assist you with planning, the latest meeting updates, including hotel and travel information, can be found by visiting the AAPT website at <www.aapt.org>.
For those who decide to make their way to the Atlanta meeting, I would like to bring to your attention a special session I have organized to highlight a few of the many excellent papers that have been published in AJP during the past year. Because of the very positive feedback received after last year's inaugural session, I have once again decided to provide an opportunity for four AJP authors to share their work in the session, The Wonderful World of AJP. This year's session will feature:
Gabriel Spalding (United States), Video recording of true single-photon double-slit interference;2
Benjamin Pérez-Garcia (Mexico), Optical interference with digital holograms;3
Eduardo de Campos Valadares (Brazil), Periodic roads and quantized wheels;4 and
Timothy Atherton (United States), Predicting the influence of plate geometry on the eddy-current pendulum.5
Though I am not an unbiased observer, I would have to say that last year's session was one of the highlights of the conference; I have no doubt that this year's session will also be one of my favorite sessions. Whether or not you can attend the conference in February, I encourage you to read (or re-read) these articles. Such articles are but a small sampling of the nuggets that continue to make AJP my favorite physics journal. And if you are unable to spare the time to read the articles now, then you should download (or print) a copy for your later reading pleasure—perhaps on your flight to Atlanta.
