The laboratory experience in introductory physics courses

Abstract

The last two decades or so have witnessed intense efforts to improve the teaching and learning of physics. Scholarly studies have provided the grounding for many projects which reform the structure of introductory courses. A number of these innovations, however, are resource intensive, or depend on the ability to introduce changes in areas which are beyond the control of the faculty (e.g., scheduling), thus inhibiting their implementation. An alternative strategy that overcomes these obstacles is to modify the nature of the laboratory experience (a component that practically nobody disputes is an essential part of the introductory course), to provide hands-on learning opportunities that differ from the traditional “follow-this-recipe-to-verify-this-law” approach. I have chosen to implement a variety of activities that support the overall objectives of the course: developing conceptual understanding and transferable skills, and providing practice in the ways scientists actually do science. Given the audience in this two-semester, algebra-based course, mostly biology majors and pre-professionals (health-related careers, such as medicine, physical therapy, and veterinary), these goals were identified as the most important and lasting contribution that a physics course can make to the students intellectual development. I offer here examples of the types of hands on activities that I have implemented, organized for the sake of this presentation in four rather loose categories, depending on which subset of the course objectives the activities mostly address: self-designed lab activities, discussion of demo-type activities, building concepts from simple to complex, and out-of-lab physical phenomena.