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Physics TheoryNet Meeting, February 11, 2023 Room 218 Dana Building, Northeastern University MINUTES -------- Attending: Mike Wadness, Medford HS Tim Fitzgibbon, Middleborough High School Scott Goelzer, Coe-Brown Northwood Academy NH Tomasz Taylor, Northeastern University Per Berglund, University of New Hampshire Maxim Metlitski, MIT Regrets: Michael Hirsh, Nishant Agarwal, Ken Olum A. Introductions: We were very happy to meet Maxim Metlitski, a condensed matter theorist from MIT, who will be joining our group. He will be paired with Mike Wadness. In addition, we were delighted to see
Per Berglund who resurfaced after the Covid break and will be working with Scott again, as for the last ~10(?) years. B. Visits: We had quite a productive Fall.
Matt Headrick came to Needham High in December -- he answered questions and discussed some basics of general relativity. Also in December, Tom visited Russ Sears’ class in Cohasset high school, where he told
students about his road to physics from early days in Poland, and talked about the redshift, expanding universe etc. Nishant Agarwal made two(!) attempts to visit Scott but each time he was blown away by a snowstorm. He will try again! C. Demonstrations and new ideas: Scott suggested an infrared camera -- we will get it very soon. There was also an extended discussion how to get students involved in astronomical observations. One way to
go is to get a telescope, but that works only at night, unless there is some way of recording observations. Another, a very interesting idea was to organize "star nights" with a Theorynet physics talk, pizza and a telescope. This is certainly worth trying,
possibly building on UNH experience with open days. Finally, there is Ken Olum's project to install a radio telescope on the roof of Tufts physics, but it turns out that for some reasons this effort can't be supported by Theorynet money. Personally (TT) I
think that the simplest way to expose students to astronomy is by a high quality optical, portable telescope. But I have no idea how to set up recordings. Students would set it up during class hour and then watch what was observed on the following day.
Is it a good idea? In a typical high school, is there a room from where overnight observations could be made, and the telescope would be safe? If yes, what equipment is required? Let’s brainstorm. D. Next meeting in May or June, will Doodle poll. It would be great if we can more teachers to participate, through Quarknet or AAPT. Please try hard to reach out. We have two new Northeastern faculty, Ning
Bao and Sarah Harrison, who expressed their interest in visiting schools. Onward (quoting Rick Dower :) Tom |