This year, a few members of the MIT Physics Education Group (PEG) attended the annual Summer Meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) on August 2-6 in Washington, D.C.
Based on investigations into the history of the Atwood Machine, Christopher Miller of the Physics Instructional Resources Lab (PIRL), demonstrated MIT’s pre-1876 device as one of 14 presenters at the annual Demo Show. He contributed an in-depth talk alongside collaborators Elizabeth Cavicchi of the MIT Edgerton Center and Joshua Gorman of the Harvard Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments. Cavicchi spoke on the democratic nature of student-led experimentation while Gorman spoke on the didactic classroom use of museum collections. Chris also presented a poster on the development of classes on vacuum systems and atomic theory delivered at Splash, an annual learning weekend hosted by MIT’s Education Studies Program.
Michelle Tomasik, the head of our MIT Online/Residential Physics Education group (MORPHE), presented on the development of Information and Entropy; Energy and Exergy (IE^3), a potential second semester course on energy transformations and statistical mechanics, piloted in IAP2025, and now available on MITx Online. Coauthors included MORPHE’s Aidan MacDonagh for developing the MITx content and PIRL’s Rosie Anderson for testing and editorial feedback – as well as the project’s faculty lead, Krishna Rajagopal, and Robert Jaffe, a faculty advisor and author of the textbook Physics of Energy.
Last summer, MIT’s Junior Physics Laboratory hosted Randolph Peterson on a sabbatical from The University of the South (Sewanee). This summer, Randy presented a poster on the alpha particle decay experiments he began during his time with us. Coauthors included Sean Robinson, director of Junior Lab, and John Wilson, a student at Sewanee.
