Better Physics

What's New

August 22, 2012 -- You can now see slides from the APS FEd-FIAP March meeting session on Astronomy's Detectors & Physics Education:  Beletic, Suntharalingam, Ricker, Ninkov, Kovac

July 23, 2012 -- Fresh Perspectives on Astronomy & Physics Education--
A collection of slides and posters relating astronomy to physics education

Better Physics

You can read "better" as an adjective and find here examples of better than ordinary physics.  But your real challenge is to read "better" as a verb and be moved to improve physics yourself.  You can do this by better writing, better research, better teaching, better outreach, better images, better studying, better books, better problems, better courses, and many other ways.  This Better Physics site welcomes ideas and examples of any of these.

For now Better Physics is supporting efforts to use the research results of modern astronomy and astrophysics to enrich undergraduate physics instruction. This site reports several efforts to this end.

• June 17-22, 2012 at Colby College in Waterville, ME there was a five-day Gordon Research Conference on Astronomy's Discoveries and Physics Education.
• February 27, 2012 at the March Meeting of the American Physical Society (APS) there was a session of invited speakers talking about "Astronomy's Detectors and Physics Education."
• February 7, 2012 at the winter meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) there was a session of invited papers "Using the Riches of Astronomy to Teach Physics." 
• In May 2012 the American Journal of Physics (AJP) published a theme issue devoted to ways to use the research results of astronomy to enrich undergraduate physics instruction
• In July 2011 at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, there was a three-day topical workshop "Using Astronomy to Teach Physics" (UATP) 
• In May 2011 at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Boston, there was a special session of invited papers "Using the Discoveries of Astronomy to Teach Physics."