We present an investigation into the interdisciplinary role of physics in a physics-for-nonphysicists course at Pomona College. This work is guided by prior research into introductory physics for life science (IPLS) courses, but attends to significant differences in the scope and context of this course. We interviewed enrolled students, physics professors, and professors from nonphysics disciplines to explore the function of this course and the role of physics in the education of nonphysics science students. Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed, then analyzed to identify emergent themes. These themes outline the authentic physics, including content knowledge and other, broader learning objectives, that play an important and distinct role in the science education of enrolled students. Stakeholders generally align in their emphasis of interdisciplinary relevance with some divergence in the specific articulation of that idea. The differences can be understood through the stakeholders' distinct areas of expertise, with nonphysics professors expressing value through relevance to their discipline and physics professors focusing on essential aspects of physics.

Students' framing of an activity -their understanding of "what is it that's going on here" [1] -shapes how they act, think, and learn. Prior research suggests that framing instructional physics laboratory activities as confirming known results is problematic for learning [2,3]. Here, we complicate those findings by presenting a case-study of students who exhibit confirmation framing as they engage in productive behavior. In this case, data that are inconsistent with the theoretical model of the lab motivate a genuine problem for the three students, who troubleshoot their apparatus and analyze their data to construct an explanation for this anomaly. We claim that their productive behavior is supported by their confirmation framing; put another way, we claim that their confirmation framing engenders their productive behavior: the students seek to explain how they could have caused this error. The case-study reported on here is part of a larger project studying student behavior in nontraditional physics labs.