Connecting with Fellow Science Educators at AAPT Portland

[robphy]

Anyone at AAPT Portland?

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Are you ? :) Looks like a lovely area!

 

[OmCheeto]

Are you ? :) Looks like a lovely area!

American Association of Physics Teachers will be returning to Portland for its Summer Meeting July 13-17, 2013

And I had this whole week off...
And I have a Physics Forums t-shirt...
And I stayed home and sat on my butt all day on the 17th...



Wait. I'm not an AAPT member. It would have cost me $900 to attend. Good god, I could buy a ton of scientific gear for that much money.

hmmm... What's this? They made six trips to the "World´s Tallest Barometer"? And it was free!

Wednesday, July 17 from 2:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. Guided Tour: The Portland State University Tall Barometer and Demonstration Tour examines the barometer from the reservoir to the top vacuum cap. A demonstration of the Earth's atmosphere pushing the working fluid up 12m (40') will be shown.

I'll have to stop by notaPSU and take a look. That sounds very cool.

 

[robphy]

I was there from Sunday to Wednesday. Portland was a nice place... Food was tasty. The meeting went well.

(I usually attend at least one of the two national AAPT meetings a year, presenting either a 10 minute talk or a poster.)

The next meetings are in Orlando (Jan '14) and Minneapolis (Jul '14).

 

[Redbelly98]

Cool, I just joined AAPT last month. I live on the opposite coast, however, and the trip was not feasible for me.

 

[robphy]

The meeting moves around. It helps when the meeting expenses ( registration , travel, and hotel ) are covered by an educational institution.

In addition to the national meetings, there are regional meetings as well :
http://www.aapt.org/aboutaapt/calendar.cfm (click the search button at the bottom if the entire year isn't shown.)

[There has been a perception (particularly by classmates when I was in grad school) that the AAPT is just for high school physics teachers. That's not true. There are also many college and university faculty, as well some enthusiastic undergrads and grad students,... from all over the US and from the rest of the world. Topics include, for example: construction of apparatus (from hands on tabletop experiments to advanced undergraduate labs), studying student understanding of various concepts in physics, new strategies and technologies to keep students engaged, new ways to teach (say) quantum mechanics, strategies for career advancement and applying for grants, etc...]