Cornell University - July 6 - 25, 2008
Designed specifically for high school physics teachers as an outreach program of the Center for Nanoscale Systems (CNS) at Cornell, the CNS Institute for Physics Teachers (CIPT) is a unique opportunity for professional development. The Institute offers a two-week and a one-week program, both for graduate credit. Twenty high school physics teachers will be selected for each course and awarded tuition, fees, housing, a stipend, classroom laboratory materials, and access to the CIPT equipment lending library.
Each course includes lectures by Cornell faculty, hands-on laboratory activities, and research facility tours designed to update high school teachers on recent advances in physics. A major component of each course will be take-home activities that relate to the New York State Physics Core Curriculum and meet the time and budgetary constraints of a typical high school.
PHYS 501 Contemporary Physics for Teachers, 2 credits. July 6 -18. This course is open to high school physics teachers new to CIPT. Lectures are given by Dr. Julie Nucci and other Cornell faculty on topics including: atomic-scale imaging, the Standard Model, integrated circuits, X-ray diffraction of biomolecules, and light-emitting diodes. Hands-on activities developed by Cornell scientists working with teachers are presented by teachers. Lab activities include: building a water analogy to electric circuits, observing subatomic particles with a cloud chamber, mapping a hidden "molecule," and converting electrical energy to light with LEDs.
PHYS 502 Topics in Physics for Teachers: Classic Labs with a New Twist, 1 credit. July 20 - 25. This course is open to CIPT alumni and other high school physics teachers. Lectures are given by Dr. Julie Nucci and other Cornell faculty; hands-on activities developed by Cornell scientists working with teachers are presented by teachers. The course includes labs that add new science and excitement to standard classroom activities. Labs may include: standing waves in a tube probed with a piezoelectric detector, a timing circuit with a photodetector to calculate the launch velocity of a projectile, a fishing experiment for the Doppler Effect, and a look at the ways color is produced in birds.
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