Enlivening introductory physics with SETI

Hobson, Art

doi:10.1119/1.1416319

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 6 publications

(5 reference statements)

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“…While other authors have noted that SETI provides excellent material for an undergraduate curriculum (Cain 1975;Hobson 2001), few have written about their implementation, with the exception of Slater (1999) who went only so far as to suggest having students install SETI@home on their computers. In our class, a bit more than half of the class assignments were traditional: 10% of the final grade was based on daily reading quizzes, another 10% on 15 min student presentations, and 30% on three papers following the themes described above.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experiential Education on the Edge: SETI Activities for the College Classroom

Crider¹,

Weston²

2012

Astronomy Education Review

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In a sophomore-level, interdisciplinary honors class, we introduced students to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence through assigned readings, student presentations, classroom discussions, and multiple experiential activities. In this paper, we present four of these novel experiential activities. In the first, students suddenly find themselves trying to make contact with an unknown person who is simultaneously trying to contact them. The second is a course-long role-playing exercise patterned after a "first contact" simulation held annually at the CONTACT: Culture of the Imagination conferences. The third and fourth are parts of a unique final exam where students must respond as a group to two surreal encounters, one being a "2001"-style monolith that shows up, as in the film, entirely without warning or instructions. For the final, we also developed an assessment rubric appropriate for this kind of open-ended test. We conclude by discussing recommendations for implementing similar experiential education activities, both specifically and in spirit, in other classes.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experiential Education on the Edge: SETI Activities for the College Classroom

Crider¹,

Weston²

2012

Astronomy Education Review

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Teaching E = mc2: Mass Without Mass

Hobson

2005

The Physics Teacher

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The mass-energy relation is, according to Einstein, the most important result of the special theory of relativity.1 Many educators have called for the inclusion of more such “modern” (post-1900) physics in our introductory courses.2 Although we frequently treat E = mc2 as a simple numerical relation, useful for solving nuclear physics problems, it is more important to discuss what this equation means. What can it tell us about the nature of energy and matter? Does rest mass arise purely from the energy of force fields? It seems not to be widely recognized that the answer to this last question is now known, at least for 90% of the mass of ordinary matter, to be “yes.”

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Enlivening introductory physics with SETI

Cited by 2 publications

References 6 publications

Experiential Education on the Edge: SETI Activities for the College Classroom

Experiential Education on the Edge: SETI Activities for the College Classroom

Teaching E = mc2: Mass Without Mass

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