Modernization and Expansion of the UW-River Falls Optics Curriculum

现代社会越来越依赖从光学科学发展而来的技术。为了保持这些领域的增长，需要在该领域具有技术技能的人员和具有基本光学现象知识的专业人员。为了满足这些社会需求，该项目的目标是改善学生在物理课程中接受的光学教育。为了实现这一目标，我们为本项目设定了三个目标：1)将非线性光学、激光设计、光谱学和光通信技术等课题的动手实验经验融入物理专业的光学课程中。2)为高中教师开发以光学为基础的暑期课程，作为教育学硕士项目的一部分，让教师有机会设计自己的课堂活动。3)开设一门名为“光的科学”的新文科课程，让非理科专业的学生有机会探索视觉、液晶、色彩和全息等光学现象。这些目标不仅影响着大学生，也影响着高中科学教师及其学生。通过实施将现代光学技术纳入整个物理课程的活动来实现这些目标。该项目正在改编物理研究和教育文献中的实验，并改编更常见的实验供教师和学生使用。

Physics (13) Modern society is increasingly reliant on technologies developed from the optical sciences. In order to sustain growth in these fields, there is a need for people with technical skills in this area and for professionals with knowledge of basic optical phenomena. To address these societal needs, the goal of this project is to improve the Optics education that students receive throughout the Physics curriculum. To implement this goal, we have established three objectives for this project: 1) Integrate a hands-on laboratory experience including the topics of nonlinear optics, laser design, spectroscopy, and optical communication technology into the Optics course for Physics majors. 2) Develop Optics-based summer coursework for high school teachers as part of the Master of Science in Education program with opportunities for teachers to design their own classroom activities. 3) Create a new liberal arts course called The Science of Light to give non-science majors the opportunity to explore optical phenomena such as vision, liquid crystals, color, and holography. These objectives impact not only university students, but also high school science teachers and their students. Each of these objectives are being met by implementing activities which integrate modern optical technology throughout the Physics curriculum. The project is adapting experiments from the physics research and education literature and adapting more common experiments for use by teachers and their students.