Areas
of Interest
My
main area of interest is Physics Education Research
and development (PERD), with the goal of improving
physics courses and curricula, in terms both of
content and pedagogy. The most visible example
of this work is the two-volume calculus-based introductory
physics textbook "Matter & Interactions" written
with Ruth Chabay. This textbook differs radically
in content from almost all other introductory physics
textbooks in its emphasis on the atomic nature
of matter and on engaging students in modeling
physical systems, including making approximations,
simplifying assumptions, and idealizations. The
intent is to make the introductory physics course
more representative of the contemporary physics
enterprise.
A
related interest is in the use of computers in
education, a field in which I have made contributions
since 1969. In the "Matter & Interactions" curriculum
students write computer programs to model physical
systems. This introduces the students to computational
science, which has become just as important as
theory and experiment in physics and other fields
of science and engineering. The programming environment VPython makes it possible after
just an hour or two of instruction for students
to write programs with navigable real-time 3D animations,
even if they have never written a program before.
I am the gatekeeper for this open-source project.
I
teach a distance
learning course based on the "Matter & Interactions" textbook
and curriculum intended for in-service teachers
of high school physics, to offer a new and deeper
view of the subject, and to introduce teachers
to computational science.
Recent
Publications
Matter & Interactions I: Modern Mechanics
and Matter & Interactions II: Electric & Magnetic
Interactions. R. W. Chabay & B. A.
Sherwood. New York: John Wiley & Sons (2nd
edition, 2007).
"Evaluating an electricity and magnetism assessment tool: Brief electricity and
magnetism assessment," Physical Review Special Topics – Physics Education
Research, http://prst-per.aps.org/abstract/PRSTPER/v2/i1/e010105.
Ding, L., Chabay, R., Sherwood, B., & Beichner, R. (2006).
"Restructuring the introductory electricity and magnetism course," American
Journal of Physics 74. R. W. Chabay & B. A. Sherwood.
(2006). p. 329-336.
"Modern Mechanics," American Journal of Physics 72.
R. W. Chabay & B. A. Sherwood (2004). p. 439-445.
"VPython: 3D Interactive Scientific Graphics for Students," Computing in Science and Engineering.
D.
Scherer, P. Dubois, & B. Sherwood.
(Sept/Oct
2000).
p.
82-88.
"Bringing atoms into first-year physics," American
Journal of Physics 67.
R.
W. Chabay & B. A. Sherwood.
(1999).
p.
1045-1050. |
