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Newspaper physics
New learning community combines physics, English.
- Every day John Hauptman, professor of physics and astronomy, looks at
the newspaper - several newspapers.
Not only does he peruse the local media, but he also looks at newspapers
from all over the nation.
"I've always liked newspapers," he said. "I usually spend
a couple of hours a day reading newspapers because they typically provide
a breadth and depth that other media can't."
Throughout his teaching career, Hauptman has brought newspapers into his
classroom. Now Hauptman has taken that approach one step further with a
"newspaper physics" course that has developed into a learning
community with the Department of English.
This unique learning community links physics at the 101 level and English
105. Students meet for two hours of physics and two hours of English per
week. In addition, every other week, the students join a two-hour writing
workshop composed of Jennifer Thornburg, who teaches the English component
of the learning community, and a maximum of four students.
"The physics discussions are appropriate for non-science students,"
Hauptman said. "We actually talk about things in the newspaper that
relate to physics. There is so much more stuff than I can include in the
class."
The learning community includes students from majors throughout campus,
including journalism, engineering, political science, English, psychology,
design and public relations. Education major Claire Robyt decided to take
the course even though it didn't count for any of her credits.
"I thought it sounded like a good way to teach a science course and
I thought I could learn something that I could relate in an elementary or
middle school classroom," she said.
Some of the newspaper articles that Hauptman has discussed with a physics
aspect include pole vaulting, satellite photos of an ancient settlement
in northeastern Syria, "snow rollers" (donut-like snowballs created
by high winds), life on Mars, and a NASA proposal to send a nuclear rocket
to Mars.
"We get a lot of physics out of a newspaper article that most people
wouldn't see at all," Hauptman said. "For instance, in the article
that discussed a possible nuclear rocket to Mars, we talked about the effects
that radiation will have on space travelers. Radiation will have a dramatic
effect on the muscle and bone mass of the astronauts coming back from such
a journey."
While Hauptman teaches the physics aspects of this learning community, Thornburg
assigns various writing assignments in English 105. Already this semester
the students have written an autobiography, have summarized an article,
written a rhetorical analysis of a physics article and interviewed a physicist
or other scientist on the Iowa State campus.
And just last week, Hauptman and Thornburg led the 20 students in the learning
community on an overnight trip to Fermilab, the nation's major high energy
physics laboratory, located just outside of Chicago. There the students
spent a day interviewing professionals at the U.S. Department of Energy
facility (pictured). Hauptman, a high-energy physicist, has long been associated
with Fermilab.
"We had the students do a trial run by interviewing a scientist on
campus before we went to Fermilab," Thornburg said. "For most
of these students it was the first time they had ever conducted an interview."
The students were responsible for arranging the interview, background research
and conducting the interview on site.
In addition to interviewing the physicists at Fermilab, the students also
met with media relations personnel and went on tours of the facility.
"This course allows us to teach physics in a rather different way,"
Hauptman said. "I think in the end students will know more physics
than they will in a traditional course."
Around LAS
April 7-27, 2003
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