Sacramento, CA (see map below)
Local Host: Chuck Hunt: email: Huntc@arc.losrios.edu
Sign up to present
Call for Presentations
We solicit presentations of 15 minutes in length. Suitable topics include teaching ideas, research projects, laboratory techniques, novel demonstrations, computers and instruction. Please send an abstract of your talk, with title, your name and affiliation, AV and equipment requests, and other requirements to the Program Chairman, Paul Robinson, preferably by email at laserpablo@aol.com. Deadline for submission is Friday, March 5, 2010.
Call for Demonstrations
Bring your favorite 5-minute demonstration for the popular “Show ‘n’ Tell”. Handouts describing your demonstration are encouraged. Likewise, giving contributed papers as Show ‘N Tells is specifically discouraged. Offenders will be gonged! Sign ups are day of the event, first come, first served (although it seems those who signs up always gets to present!). Do you have a great resource you want to share but are nervous about presenting to your peers? Our Show ‘n’ Tell is low pressure and a great place to give your first presentation at a teaching conference!
Program
Friday Evening Social
Plan on getting together Friday evening before the meeting. More details to follow in the program. We’ll also provide references for local lodging for Friday evening.
Saturday meeting/mini conference
Saturday starts at 8:00 with registration and socializing, and usually finishes 3:30/4:00. We have a brief business meeting around lunch time. Coffee/donuts is provided, and lunch is usually available for a reasonable price (reservations for lunch required). Exact details will be published once we have our speaker list set.
Other details
Dues and Don’ts
Section dues are $25 per year, due each Fall. If you cannot attend the meeting, remain an active member that will ensure you’ll receive all our mailings by sending dues to our treasurer Dennis Buckley, Liberty High School, 850 Second St., Brentwood, CA 94513. The registration fee for the Spring meeting is $10, payable at the door. First-timers are free! And don’t forget PTSOS participants—your dues are already paid!
Physics Teacher SOS (PTSOS)
PTSOS is an NCN-AAPT-sponsored project, funded by a substantial donation, allowing AAPT to deliver top quality help to physics teachers in their vulnerable first years of teaching. Workshops are now conducted in both San Mateo and Sacramento. Other veteran teachers are being signed up to help out small groups of local teachers through mentorships and also to help run workshops. Interested teachers are encouraged to visit the website (www.ptsos.org) and contact outreach coordinator Stephanie Finander at sfinander@sbcglobal.net for more information.
Dr. Chris Fassnacht, UC Davis, will present his lecture, “Measuring the Universe with Gravitational Lenses” on Thursday, February 11, 2010, at 4pm in Mendocino Hall 1015, Sacramento State University. This lecture is free and open to the public.
Chris Fassnacht received his AB degree from Harvard College and immediately afterward joined the Peace Corps, where he served as a secondary school math and science teacher in Ghana, West Africa. After returning, he received a PhD from Caltech. He held postdoctoral fellowships at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro, NM and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, MD. He is currently an associate professor in the physics department at UC Davis, where he has been for the last seven years.
Prof. Fassnacht’s research involves using gravitational lenses to measure the rate at which the Universe is expanding and how galaxies such as the Milky Way are assembled.
Guest of Honor: Sy Liebergot, Flight Controller of Mission Control during Apollo Program
Saturday Meeting/Conference
Conference Center, NASA Ames, Moffett Field, CA
From Highway 101:
1. Exit Moffett Blvd./NASA Parkway.
2. At the stop sign just short of the NASA Ames gate, turn right into the conference center parking lot.
Friday Evening Social
6:00-8:30 PM Hot Dog Reception
Complimentary Hot Dogs (beef or tofu) and Beer at “Rancho Robinson”
424 Quartz Street; Redwood City, CA 94062 (directions)
Guest of Honor: Sy Liebergot, Flight Controller of Mission Control during Apollo program.
Sy will share some of his experiences with the filmmakers and actors of Apollo 13. He will also be available to autograph books and answer questions what it was like to be one of the central players on the mission control team–during good times and bad.
Saturday Meeting/Conference
Conference Center, NASA Ames, Moffett Field, CA
From Highway 101:
1. Exit Moffett Blvd./NASA Parkway.
2. At the stop sign just short of the NASA Ames gate, turn right into the conference center parking lot.
8:00 Registration, Coffee, Donuts and other culinary delights.
8:55 Welcome and Announcements
9:00 Show and Tell
Share your favorite demonstration or teaching tip. Since new teachers and section members will be at this meeting, veterans are encouraged to dust off some of your oldies but goodies. If you have handouts, please bring 75 copies. PASCO will present their latest products. Time limit is 5 minutes person, or you risk the dreaded gong.
9:45 “Transit Tracks: NASA’s Kepler Mission”
Edna DeVore
SETI Institute; edevore@seti.org
Using a model of a planet transiting a star, students learn what a transit is, under what conditions a transit may be seen, and what effects a planet’s size and distance from its star have on transit behavior. Students interpret graphs of brightness vs time to deduce characteristics of a star-planet system. Demonstration, hand-outs, and NASA Kepler Mission poster provided.
10:00 Invited Speaker: “The Search for Habitable Worlds”
Natalie Batalha
NASA Ames and San Jose State University; nbatalha@science.sjsu.edu
NASA’s Kepler Mission has begun its 3.5-year quest for habitable planets like Earth in our galaxy. Natalie will define habitability from the perspective of the Kepler science team and describe how and where the spacecraft will look for worlds reminiscent of our own. She will give an overview of what to expect in the coming years as we work to understand whether Earth-like planets in our galaxy are common or rare.
11:00 Keynote Speaker: Sy Liebergot; EECOM Mission Flight Controller for Apollo
This year is the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo program that culminated with landing on the moon. N Cal/Nev AAPT is pleased to commemorate mankind’s greatest adventures with a special appearance of Sy Liebergot.
Sy will speak about what it was like to be a Mission Flight Controller when a monster failure occurred during the Apollo 13 mission and landed squarely in his lap. He relates the general details of the explosion as they really happened.
Sy will also speak about Ethics in Engineering, using the real examples of the Apollo 1 pad fire disaster and the Shuttle Challenger and Columbia space disasters as subjects for this presentation. He describes how he and his fellow Apollo mission flight controllers approached their part in the successful lunar landings in an ethical manner. Sy uses real-life examples that convey in a way realistic and memorable enough to train engineers to deal with the heart-wrenching decisions some of them will have to make, particularly when they become managers. He examines how ethics (or the diminution of) played a role in the three tragedies of the U.S. space program: the Apollo 1 pad fire, the in-flight destruction of Shuttle Orbiters Challenger and Columbia.
Sy will be available for book signings after his talk.
12:30 Lunch at NASA Ames
Video replay of the LCROSS lunar impact from the Oct. 9 morning
1:30 Business Meeting
Look, only 30 minutes long!
2:00 Invited Talk: “Taking a Ride on the Wild Side: The Successful Stardust Sample Return Mission to Comet 81P/Wild 2″
Scott Sandford
NASA Ames, ssandford@mail.arc.nasa.gov
In 2006, NASA’s STARDUST Mission successfully returned samples from Comet 81P/Wild 2 to the Earth for study. The spacecraft was launched in 1999 and on January 2, 2004 it made a close flyby (236 km) of the nucleus of Comet Wild 2 (pronounced “Vildt Two”). During the flyby the spacecraft collected samples of dust from the coma of the comet. These samples were returned to Earth on January 15, 2006 after which they receiving a preliminary six month examination to establish the basic nature of the returned samples. The samples were then turned over to the NASA Curatorial Office where they have since been available to the general worldwide scientific community for continued study.
Scott is one of the original Co-Investigators and Science Team members of the STARDUST mission and was on the team that recovered the Sample Return Capsule from the Utah desert. He also escorted the capsule to NASA-Johnson Space Center, assisted with the removal of the samples from the capsule, and led the Preliminary Examination Team responsible for studying the organic materials in the returned samples. Samples have confirmed some of the ideas we had about comets and the origin of our Solar System, and completely overturned others.
3:00 End of program
3:00 Canceled “Shooting the Moon: Precision Tests of General Relativity with APOLLO
Charles HoyleHumboldt State University; charles.hoyle@humboldt.edu
It has been nearly forty years since the first reflectors were placed on the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts. Laser ranging to these mirrors provides high-precision tests of General Relativity, as well as a host of information about the lunar ephemeris. APOLLO (the Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation) recently obtained the first ranges with millimeter precision, representing an order-of-magnitude improvement over previous efforts. In the near future, this enhanced performance will provide unprecedented tests of the Strong Equivalence Principle, the best measure of the constancy of the gravitational constant, G, the most stringent limitations on predicted deviations of the gravitational inverse-square law, and information about the lunar environment. We discuss the techniques employed by APOLLO, initial results, and expected sensitivity.
Logistics
Registration
Fee is waived for first-time attendees and students! Everyone else pays only $20 — which includes lunch. A bargain at twice the price!
Registration can be completed on Saturday morning.
Lodging
Local hotels include (in no particular order):
Comfort Inn
Redwood City
1818 El Camino Real
Redwood City, CA 94063
800-444-6835
$80+/night
or
Days Inn Palo Alto-Stanford
4238 El Camino Real
Stanford, CA 94306
800-346-8357
$69+/night
or
Comfort Inn
Palo Alto Stanford University
3945 El Camino Rreal
Palo Alto, CA 94306
800-346-8357
$85+/night
or
DAmerica’s Best Inn
1090 El Camino Real
Redwood City, CA 94063
800-346-5357
$70+/night
or
Travelodge Palo Alto
3255 El Camino Real
Palo Alto, CA 94306
800-346-8357
$74+/night
or
Mermaid Inn
727 El Camino Real
Menlo Park, CA 94025
650-323-9481
$76+/night
Physics educators have used photos of natural and man-made breakwaters to show refraction for probably as long as we’ve had photography. But now online mapping web sites (Google, Yahoo. etc.) allow you to find locations near you to make the images more tangible to your students. Oceans and bays are full of images of refraction, but you may also find diffraction patterns in a large lake.
Below is an example from a breakwater in Berkeley, CA, in the San Francisco Bay
View Larger Map
Check water bodies around your institution to find examples you can use with your students. Most mapping sites allow you to save landmarks in a “My maps” section, so once you find a good location, you can save it, then pull it up from a list when you need to show it in class.
One warning: Map sites update their satellite photographs every so often (as the USGS releases newer ones), so check your location before your lecture to make sure your pattern is still there!
There’s never been a better time to enhance your professional career…
Join us in Ann Arbor for cutting-edge teaching methods and physics research, and cost effective connections to your colleagues in the physics community. This meeting promises to help you find ideas and inspiration to take back to your classroom. http://www.aapt.org/Events/sm2009/registration.cfm.
Here are just a few of the highlighted events :
Noteworthy speakers include Robert A. Millikan Medal winner Arthur Eisenkraft, Klopsteg Memorial Awardee Lee Smolin, and AIP’s Andrew W. Gemant Awardee John S. Rigden.
Don’t miss David Saltzberg discuss his time served as physics consultant for the popular television situation-comedy “The Big Bang Theory.”
Be sure to sign-up for our Detroit City Tour with a stop at the Motown Historical Museum, and our Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village Tour.
The 2009 AAPT Summer Meeting is just a couple weeks away and we have extended the registration deadline to Monday, July 6th!
Dear Advanced/Intermediate Lab Faculty and Technical Staff,
I encourage you to consider attending the Advanced Lab Topical Conference at U. of Michigan, July 23-25 (just before the summer AAPT meeting). These conferences only happen about every 15 years, and should be of considerable interest to faculty and technical staff involved with college-level physics labs beyond the introductory level. Details can be found on the conference web page http://advlabs.aapt.org/events/event.cfm?ID=2
Registration will be capped at 120 and we currently have at least 100
registrants, so sign up soon if you plan to attend.
Lost cost ($150) registration has been extended and there is low cost
housing in the dorms as well as discounted airfares using the AAPT summer
meeting discount code. You can attend the Topical Conference without
attending the AAPT meeting, although you are encouraged to go to both.
Regards,
Jim Lockhart
James M. Lockhart, Ph.D.
Professor and Assoc. Chair
Physics and Astronomy Dept.
San Francisco State University
1600 Holloway Ave.
San Francisco, CA 94132-4163
415-338-2451 FAX 415-338-2178
e-mail: lockhart@stars.sfsu.edu
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched on a 15-year mission to explore the universe. Now, just past it’s 19th birthday, it is getting a new lease on life. Space Shuttle mission STS-125 (scheduled for launch on May 11) is slated to replace and repair science instruments, computers, batteries,
gyroscopes and blankets. This, the last Hubble servicing mission, should
allow Hubble to operate as a fully operational enhanced astronomical observatory for many more years. At JPL we are taking this opportunity to
revisit the Hubble mission and the work of JPL’s Wide Field and Planetary
Camera 2, Hubble’s workhorse science instrument. The camera has taken most of the revolutionary images attributed to Hubble. We’ll recap the Shuttle mission activities as well. 2009 is also the International Year of Astronomy (IYA).
This event is a global celebration of astronomy and its contributions to society and culture and marks the 400th anniversary of the first use of an astronomical telescope by Galileo Galilei. The aim of the Year is to stimulate interest, especially among young people, in astronomy and science under the central theme “The Universe, Yours to Discover.” We will discuss IYA2009 events and activities and ways to promote a greater appreciation of the inspirational aspects of astronomy.
Who
All educators (including museum staff) and students high school and above interested in Earth and space science and exploration. The conference content is generally non-technical but does include some detailed scientific and engineering content. The objective of the conference is to tell the exciting tale of real-life exploration and new discovery in a way that will excite and inspire students. Students under 18 years of age must be accompanied by a registered adult.
When
All day Saturday, May 30, and the morning of Sunday, May 31, 2009. Check-in begins at 7:45 A.M. On Saturday the conference will conclude by 5:00 pm. On Sunday the conference will end at noon for a total of 12 hours of professional development time.
Where
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s von Kármán Auditorium. JPL is located in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains north of the Rose Bowl.
Pre-registration is required; walk-up registration will not be possible for this conference. Note that you will need to show a photo ID at JPL’s security checkpoint upon arrival each day.
Registration
To register for this conference please send a check postmarked by Friday, May 22, 2009, for $40.00 payable to “Jet Propulsion Laboratory” to: Hubble Educator Conference Attn: Mary Kay Kuehn
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
M/S 180-109
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena CA 91109
Please register by Friday, May 22, 2009. The $40 registration fee includes continental breakfast and breaks both days and a box lunch on Saturday. For registration questions please call the JPL Education Office at 818-393-0561. For updates and information visit the JPL Education Gateway at http://education.jpl.nasa.gov/.
Name________________________________________
Title_________________________________________
Organization/School_________________________________________________
Address_______________________________________ State____ Zip________
Grade(s) Taught/Enrolled_____________________________________________
Subject(s) Taught/Enrolled____________________________________________
Contact info for confirmation & last minute changes:
E-mail: ________________________________
Phone: ________________________________
Events and speakers, NCNAAPT meetings & news, PTSOS, Professional Development, Teacher Support, Teaching equipment, University support | WebWeaver | 
February 14, 2010 10:05 pm | 
Comments (0) 
Complimentary Hot Dogs (beef or tofu) and Beer at “Rancho Robinson”
Edna DeVore
SETI Institute; edevore@seti.org
Natalie Batalha
NASA Ames and San Jose State University; nbatalha@science.sjsu.edu
This year is the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo program that culminated with landing on the moon. N Cal/Nev AAPT is pleased to commemorate mankind’s greatest adventures with a special appearance of Sy Liebergot.
Scott Sandford
NASA Ames, ssandford@mail.arc.nasa.gov
Charles Hoyle
Subscribe
