Gabe Spalding

#ITeachPhysics

YouTube video by physicsteachers The Future of Physics Education: What Federal Funding Cuts Mean for Equity and Innovation

The video has been uploaded and is now available on YouTube:
youtu.be/lf9zz1R76rI

We’re all going to DC! Join us! #ITeachPhysics

Researchers who have had their NSF grants cancelled and are finishing up publications started before the termination…. How are we thanking (or not thanking) NSF in the acknowledgments? I can’t be the only one thinking about this! Feel free to drop your preprint or pub below.👇 #academicsky #science 🧪

#ITeachPhysics Today, you should beat a drum or bang a gong: it's Friedrich Bessel's birthday. (Bessel functions generically emerge as solutions to wave equations when you do separation of variables in cylindrical coordinates) www.falstad.com/circosc/

Visiting U.S. Senate and House offices, in support of science and science education, for AAPT. My sub-group: Professor Eric Brewe (representing CU*iP conferences), Professor Thomas Searles (representing NSBP), Dr. Mark Elsesser (Government Affairs, APS), and Ellie Clancy (Lot Sixteen)

eprints.gla.ac.uk/218806/9/218...

Join AAPT's FREE Virtual Event, "Issue Briefing: The Future of Physics Education", on July 17, 12–1 pm ET. This event is designed for educators, advocates, funders, and anyone passionate about the future of undergraduate #STEMeducation. Register here: ow.ly/325Q50Wni5u @mqmlab.bsky.social

Collaborators need to see that: (1) the journal chosen should be a match to the audience (not just a matter of overall "impact factor") and that (2) while the "half life" for citations on an article published on most journals is quite short, for the American Journal of Physics it is incredibly long!

Observation of image pair creation and annihilation from superluminal scattering sources Researchers experimentally investigate the superluminal kinematics of scattering light sources through ultrafast time-resolved imaging.

We published this in the wrong place: should've been AJP! #ITeachPhysics
"Observation of image pair creation and annihilation from superluminal scattering sources"
Science advances 2 (4), e1501691 www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Everyone should pay more attention to this story.

#ITeachPhysics TeachSpin, which designs, develops, manufactures Advanced Lab instructional apparatus, seeks a physicist w/ experience in building apparatus. Preference is for one with a PhD and experience in teaching the Advanced Lab. Send resume/cover letter to jfreichert@teachspin.com.

Yes, my students have made these (and enjoyed them!)

5/5: These NSF grants were terminated. Are you connected with a foundation that might want to step in? I also, more broadly, encourage corporate partnership with AAPT aapt.org/Membership/p...

4/5: Leila Janah argued, "Talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not." Young women tend to be more self-critical AND less encouraged to follow such interests. AAPT has partnered to encourage EVERYONE to give themselves permission to “like what they like” and to see themselves going on.

3/5: The “more mathematical” subfields of STEM have been much slower in showing improved reach towards EXPANDING our talent pool (Physics & Engineering degrees are ~ 20% women). Yet by 2030 the U.S. is on track to have more than half of advanced semiconductor jobs go unfilled.

2/5: Bachelor’s recipients are of importance to our high-tech economy and societal needs, but STEM is not a monolith, either in terms of projected workforce needs or in terms of the degree to which there remains vast, untapped potential. #ITeachPhysics

1/5: NSF cuts are deepest on the mathematical side of STEM. Yet these posts argue we are facing a significant nationwide shortage of advanced-degree-holding talent in such areas, and median starting salaries for Physics bachelors who directly enter the workforce continue to soar.

4/4: I've spoken with the CEO of SPIE: we’re very concerned about how to expand our pipeline to meet high-end workforce needs in Optics & Photonics! On the mathematical side of STEM, we are facing a significant nationwide shortage of advanced-degree-holding STEM talent.

3/4: There are many societal needs where Physics students play key roles, highlighted by recent legislation with strong bipartisan support, e.g. the America Rescue Plan, the National Photonics Initiative, the National Quantum Initiative, the US CHIPS & Science Act, among others.

2/4: A larger argument (under-appreciated by universities and by prospectives students and their families) is that Physics students play a keystone role in our necessarily high-tech world, doing necessary good as highly adaptable "residents" within the mathematical side of STEM.

1/4: #ITeachPhysics Median starting salaries for Physics bachelors who directly enter the workforce are only a small part of the case that these are the kinds of alumni a university should strive to create: it shows that they do well for themselves.

What has been proposed does not constitute “Gold Standard” stewardship of America's innovation economy, and of key, pressing societal needs.

4/4: My posts will focus on the more foundational parts of "the tree” that, without necessarily realizing it so much, we all depend upon for sustaining our high-tech economy and societal needs. A teacher is akin to a gardener: as Dr. Seuss’s Lorax speaks for the trees, we must speak for the degrees!

3/4: As a society, we cannot simply have the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge (i.e. the applications), without recognizing that those fruits need the support of the twigs they blossom from, and those twigs need branches, branches need boughs, boughs need trunks: it is all inescapably interconnected!

2/4: "Does government have any more foundational aspiration than EDUCATION of its populace? For if the people are well educated, so much else follows." Yet federal financial aid now covers the lowest % of college costs in Pell Grant history and Trump seeks a 30% cut with harsh terms.

1/4: In 1776, as General Cornwallis’s troops advanced upon the College of William & Mary, representatives of the secret society Phi Beta Kappa were sent out to Harvard and to Yale, to ensure that the society would not cease to exist: their revolutionary tenet sprang from the following question…

4/4: This year we are more than a factor of ten below our recommended levels, not resulting in significant savings. There are many studies showing that investing in top talent pays off. What do you think happens when we don’t?

3/4: On the scale of a national budget, investing to support our top graduate students in science is inexpensive, but the administration’s NSF request for 2026 calls for a cut of more than 55% in the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program.

2/4: Yet median starting salary for Physics bachelors NOT attending grad school is ~ $70K. So, we called for fivefold increase to the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program to ensure the competitiveness we require to retain top talent in the pipeline.