Using a science museum field trip for an alternative physics final exam Available to Purchase

Early on in my physics teaching career, I discovered that the best way to teach physics is to work through many examples, use demos, and provide hands-on activities. However, written exams always seem to be the inevitable conclusion, which can ultimately take any joy out of a course, especially for non-science majors taking physics. Can a final exam be nontraditional¹? Yes! My first thought was to use the hands-on nature of physics or real-world physics, but to address the diversity in problems included in a typical physics final seemed like a daunting task. What could provide me with a wide enough variety of preexisting hands-on activities? The answer that I found was to use the local science museum [for me, the Adventure Science Center located in Nashville, TN (Fig. 1)] to host the final exam. It contains a variety of physics topics using hands-on exhibits that can’t...