The department continues to conduct several efforts which benefit education at the public schools. The faculty involved in these efforts are primarily Associate Professors David Lamp, Tom Gibson, and Wally Glab. There have been four separate efforts this last year.

Physics 1400, Fundamentals of Physics, was first taught in Fall, 1998, for 34 elementary education majors. These students were taught some simple physics and then taught how to teach it to children. They then went to a Primary School and participated in teaching it to a class. This course received rave reviews and is being taught again this semester. A principle difficulty is that the department lacks the hands on equipment suitable for small children. This course is successful because of the personal contacts between Department of Physics faculty, College of Education faculty, and a team of teachers in the public schools. This course was designed using two grants from the Texas Education Agency.

In the summer of 1999, an electricity workshop was taught for 20 middle school teachers. They learned about voltage, current, resistance, and power. They also learned to devise inquiry-based lab exercises for students. This workshop was funded by the Texas Education Agency's Eisenhower Grant program. The high point of the summer, for the teachers, was when the grant purchased a laptop computer for each teacher to use in the classroom.

Throughout 1998-99, a series of Saturday morning workshops were held for children in grades 1, 2, and 3. Each monthly workshop focused on a different topic. Workshops on Sound and Music Balance and Motion Sink and Float and Electricity and Magnetism were held. Approximately 100 children attended each. Many students were accompanied by parents. A brief, focused Physics Circus is performed, followed with four hands on labs. In the three hour program, the students all attend the Circus and then rotate through the labs. Howard Hughes Medical Institute provides some funding to purchase needed consumables.

In the past year, we have offered numerous Physics Circus performances either in the public school classroom or at TTU. These are enormously successful in that students learn about physics in a fun environment.

This page was last modified on December 21, 1999