Special Lectures

March Lectures, 2009

Thursday, March 19, 2009, SLAC Bldg 137
Professor Karimat El-Sayed, 3rd floor SSRL conference room

Friday, March 20, 2009, Tresidder Union
Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman, 11:00am, Oak West
Professor Karimat El-Sayed, 3:00pm, Oak Room

The Physics department will host a special lecture on March 20, 2009 by Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman, Director of the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative at the University of British Columbia. Prof. Wieman will address research in science education in his lecture, which will be held at 11:00 AM in Oak West at Tresidder. Everyone welcome.

Focus on Physics and Science Education
Friday, March 20, 2009

Speaker: Carl Wieman, U of British Columbia, U of Colorado,
Director of the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative at University of British Columbia (http://www.cwsei.ubc.ca/)
Director of the Science Education Initiative at University of Colorado (http://www.colorado.edu/sei/)

11:00 Seminar -- Open to public. Refreshments served at 10:45.
Oak West, 2nd floor of Tresidder Union
"Science Education in the 21st Century: Using the methods of science to teach science"
Guided by experimental tests of theory and practice, science has advanced rapidly in the past 500 years. Guided primarily by tradition and dogma, science education meanwhile has remained largely medieval. Research on how people learn is now revealing how many teachers badly misinterpret what students are thinking and learning from traditional science classes and exams. However, research is also providing insights on how to do much better. The combination of this research with modern information technology is setting the stage for a new approach that can provide the relevant and effective science education for all students that is needed for the 21st century. I will discuss the failures of traditional educational practices, even as used by "very good" teachers, and the successes of some new practices and technology that characterize this more effective approach, and how these results are highly consistent with findings from cognitive science.
12:30 - 1:30 Open forum on physics eduction for Physics faculty, teaching staff, postdocs, graduate students and physics majors.
Lunch served. Physics and Astrophysics Building, Room 102/103.
1:30 - 2:30 "Using interactive simulations for teaching physics" (http://phet.colorado.edu/research/)
Physics and Astrophysics Building, Room 102/103.

Professor Karimat El-Sayed, a winner of the UNESCO/L'Oreal prize and a prominent Egyptian crystallographer in the Physics Department of Ain-Shams University in Cairo, Egypt, will be visiting Stanford University and SLAC on March 19-21, 2009. She will present two seminars during this time:

"The Use of Synchrotron Radiation In Cultural Heritage (Art and Archeology)" at 3:30 pm at SLAC on Thursday, March 19, 2009 Location: Third floor SSRL conference room in Building 137 at SLAC. This talk is sponsored by the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory at SLAC. Abstract [PDF]
"Women in Physics in Egypt and the Arab World" at 3:00 pm on Friday, March 20, 2009 Location: Oak Room at Tressider Union on the Stanford University Campus. This talk is sponsored by the Stanford Physics Department, the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford, and SLAC. Abstract [PDF]

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