Physics education research, electronic materials, and the musings of Christopher Moore, Ph.D.

I’m at Creighton University in Omaha, NE for the 2011 AAPT Summer Meeting. There tends to be a lot of down time during these things, so I’ll probably kill time blogging about the things I find interesting.

I decide that I would stay in the dorms this time around, so that I could save my department a little money. It has taken about 10 minutes for me to de ide to never do that again. It smells like freshman year.

The Midwest has also decided that 100+ degrees F was an acceptable temperature. Not usually a problem indoors, however, the dorm I was assigned is literally on the opposite side of a very large campus from where the actual conference is taking place. I going to ruin a lot of nice shirts this week.

While I’m busy complaining, one other item: downtown Omaha absolutely requires a car. Thank Pasta I decided to spring for a rental car. Big difference from the Boston and San Fran trips I’ll be taking in a few months.

The good stuff: nothing has happened yet, but I’m looking forward to a few things. For the first time at AAPT I have a few committee meetings to attend. One of the “benefits” of getting older and slightly more recognized within my field. There are a few awesome talks that I’m looking forward to. Colorado School of Mines will be discussing how in the hell they manage to average 250 physics majors for a relatively small institution. Ed Prather is giving some award talk. I’m sure it will be a slightly different version of the one I’ve seen him give many times, but he’s always entertaining. A few talks about epistemology, which is an area I’ve moved into. And several other things that I may discuss later.

Not much else tonight, other than an undergraduate poster session, exhibition and welcome reception. I’ll ask the Freeman reps tonight if smartPhysics will be less buggy next semester. Maybe I’ll actually start work on my talk, which I give on Wednesday!