From Scratchpad

Before arriving at UC Boulder I studied chemistry at Vanderbilt University, nuclear physics at Argonne National Laboratory, and atomic physics at Yale University Graduate School.

My work here is to provide resources for learning physics. When I started 28 years ago, that involved fabricating experiments, computer simulations, and audiovisual materials myself. Today filtering through internet physics simulations to find good resources is part of the job. Usually undergraduate labs are called “teaching labs”. Through focusing on what the students are trying to do, rather than on what the instructors think they are doing, it was decided in 1988 to name our labs the “Learning Labs” instead. The Physics Learning Laboratories consist of a lecture demonstration lab, a pc computing lab, and an Advanced Lab, for Junior and Senior physics majors. The Advanced Lab includes electronics, optics, optical engineering, and modern physics lab areas. Running these labs effectively would not be possible without the excellent assistance of several student and part-time employees.

The best part of my work is interacting with some of the most fascinating and brilliant people around, faculty, staff, and students. Next is the satisfaction of knowing our students have resources for learning physics which are state of art, equal to the best available anywhere. The deepest level of enjoyment for me is doing the science, the scientific and esthetic pleasure of interacting with nature and being surprised by the results.

The game in a physics lecture demonstration laboratory is to be able to demonstrate the phenomena of the physical world in the classroom, especially the non-intuitive phenomena, and to do this on as large a scale as possible, and in a way that involves as many human senses as possible simultaneously. In other words, using our eyes, ears, our kinesthetic senses, and our brains to observe how the world really works. What is different about a world-class lecture demonstration lab like this one, is the comprehensiveness and the subtlety of the principles we can recreate in the classroom.

Physics has a very unique, centuries old tradition of using children’s toys to demonstrate the principles of physics. (The lab includes equipment purchased by the University a hundred years ago, which is so rugged and well built that we still use it today in the lecture halls.) Physicists are, in a way, children who never lose their sense of wonder for the world. Christmas is a special time because there are always new toys to use to teach physics in new ways. Certainly, most of the apparatus and equipment in this lab are not children’s toys. One could draw that conclusion however, based on how much we enjoy “playing” in the lecture demonstration lab. One of my favorite titles was given to me by a physics wizard at a CU Wizard show: “The Governor of Toys”.

Professor John Taylor, now retired, and I started performing “Mr Wizard” shows for public audiences the first year I came here, 1980. Over the years we have given Wizard shows for students and teachers all over the state of Colorado, produced tv shows for Denver stations which won an educational Emmy, collaborated in the genesis of the CU Science Discovery Program, and evolved the current CU Wizards series.

When I began here, only two or three professors in the physics department claimed teaching as a special interest. It is especially gratifying to me that now, in this department, we are treating physics learning just the way we would treat any other research problem in physics, bringing to bear all the intelligence we’ve got, and every scientific tool available to find the best ways for students to learn physics. We call this new field of physics “physics education research”.

Through this research, we have concluded that students learn better from demonstrations and simulations than from lecturing. Even these are not effective however, unless they are interactive and collaborative. Students must be challenged in class to predict what will happen when the experiment is performed, discuss their predictions in small groups, and reach a consensus. Each student votes with a handheld transmitter and predictions are displayed on a computer projection screen. The “non-intuitive” results of carefully chosen demos allow students a chance to replace misconceptions with more physically-based intuitions.

Another enjoyable part of my work is the ability to collaborate and consult on a national and international level. The nationally touring museum exhibition “The Electric Universe” included two exhibits I designed and built. By attending national and international meetings of the physics societies I have been able to share the unique work done in Boulder and serve as an officer of the Physics Instructional Resource Association and the Colorado/Wyoming Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers. International video and film crews are frequent guests in the lab shooting scenes for new shows and videos.

Working as a member of a team of physics resource professionals from schools across the United States, we created a digital classification scheme for physics lecture demonstrations and a comprehensive bibliography of all published literature of lecture demonstrations. My website, http://physicslearning.colorado.edu, is home to the only interactive online version of this bibliography, which is used worldwide.

The “physicslearning” website includes a state-of-the-art database of lecture demonstrations and online ordering system which is used by Physics and Astrophysical and Planetary Science instructors to reserve demonstrations and audio-video items for their classes. Additionally, This website is home to the world's only “spiders” to exclusively crawl University Physics Lecture Demonstration Websites. Once every four weeks it creates a new index to the complete contents of 56 University Physics Lecture Demonstration Websites. Resources from this lab are also used in the Program for Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, Geological Sciences, and the Engineering School.

My awards include the President’s Faculty Excellence Award and an award from Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society.

My favorite activities are bicycling, trail running, weightlifting, rock climbing, and ocean and river kayaking. I have commuted to the university by bicycle, twelve months a year, for 28 years. In the Boulder community I have served on the Board of Directors of Emergency Family Assistance Association, as President of the Board and as Chair of the Programs committee. Currently I am campus staff advisor to the impressive student chapter of Engineers Without Borders, and I am Eco-leader for the Duane Physics Building. As a member of EWB’s Peru group, we are designing and installing a solar-voltaic water well for a Peruvian village with no potable water.

Michael Thomason, Director of Physics Learning Laboratories, University of Colorado Boulder Department of Physics