Meeting Notes and Next Meeting

Tucson-Area Physics Teachers,

We has a fantastic meeting Saturday! Thanks to all who attended. 

Many, many thanks to our wonderful and gracious speaker, Dr. Brenda Frye. She was mesmerizing, and we not only learned a lot, but were basically entranced by the subject and the presentation.  Dr. Frye is an astronomer at Steward Observatory and an Assistant Professor in the Astronomy Department. Her enthusiasm for her research and for science in general is infectious! 

Dr. Frye talked about gravitational lensing and how she and others have used it to map dark matter. There were also some wonderful stories about the difficulty of doing science, for example, during WWI when communication between Germany and England was forbidden, and Einstein was in Germany and Eddington was in England. Some other threads concerned Vera Rubin, the first to notice rotation curves that led to the idea of dark matter - what an admirable scientist she was! Also Dr. Frye discussed some future Citizen Science possibilities. She ended her talk with the question, what is a galaxy? Her answer basically exploded everyone’s mind. There are some very deep mysteries, and a big reason is the presence of dark matter. She made the point that we know less about dark matter now than we did 10 years ago. It was fascinating!

Also, there was an amazing breakfast, sponsored by the U of A Physics Department and planned by J.D. Thanks to both!  We also had an attendee from Phoenix: Jim Ward, who has served for the last few years as the President of the Arizona section of AAPT. AzAAPT had a great meeting in Phoenix last week, Sept 30th. The AzAAPT's next meeting (next April) is planned for Bearizona, near Flagstaff. I am attaching Jim's report from the September meeting, in case you want details. It was a really good all-day meeting - lots of great information, and I'd love it if more Tucson teachers got involved.

Our next TAPT meeting is November 11^th; it is tentatively scheduled to be at Pima Community College West Campus. We’ll have a free-for-all discussion about scheduling your class: how to cover everything you need to cover, how to fit in all the subjects, how deep to go, when to do lab and when to go deeper, how to know if your students know enough for you to move on. It will be relevant to AP as well as regular physics and college physics. Helen Reynolds, TAPT member and British physics teacher extraordinaire, will be leading the discussion, but I think it will be a discussion among everyone. Helen has several books in publication, and she will be telling us about one in particular that she uses for a one-year curriculum. Recert hours are available. More info to follow.

I hope your year is going great! Thanks for participating in TAPT - I hope it's helpful and enriching. I hope to see everyone at the next meeting. Please email me if you have any questions.

Best,

Meeting on Saturday

Tucson Area Physics Teachers,

Don't forget that our yearly opening meeting is Saturday, October 7th, at the U of A. We'll meet at 8:30 for breakfast, generously supplied by the U of A Physics Department. At 9:00 the talk starts, given by Dr. Brenda Frye of the Steward Observatory:

Title:  "Finding the Best Natural Telescopes in Space”

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Abstract:  In this talk we will review the phenomenon of how mass bends light, or gravitational lensing.  We will recount the early gravitational lensing experiment in 1919 that established how mass bends light. We will then move on to discuss work in the present day, including the discovery of images of distant galaxies that appear in multiple positions as a result of lensing.  We will see in which way these galaxy “photocopies” enable measurements of the mass of the dark matter.  And along the way we will discuss the numerics of lensing to achieve a better insight into this powerful tool of astrophysics.  

It promises to be super interesting.

Details: We'll meet in PAS 218. PAS is on 4th Street between Highland and Park, on the south side of the road. Only the West doors of the building will be open. Park either at the 6th Avenue garage or the Tyndall Garage. A map is here. Parking is free on weekends. Breakfast at 8:30, talk at 9:00, we aim to finish by 10:30.

If you haven't been to TAPT before, this is a great meeting to attend. Come and meet fellow science and physics teachers at all levels. We try to be a low-key organization - there's a lot of sharing and no pressure to speak. At most meetings, there is some information you can use in your classroom. 

Everyone is welcome! Feel free to pass this to other teachers that you know will be interested in this subject.

Hope to see everyone Saturday!

Best,

Karie