Modernization and Expansion of the UW-River Falls Optics Curriculum

物理学(13)现代社会越来越依赖从光学科学发展而来的技术。为了维持这些领域的增长，需要在这一领域拥有技术技能的人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，本项目的目标是改善学生在整个物理课程中接受的光学教育。为了实现这一目标，我们为这个项目确定了三个目标：1)将包括非线性光学、激光设计、光谱学和光通信技术在内的实践经验融入到物理专业的光学课程中。2)为高中教师开发基于光学的暑期课程，作为教育科学硕士计划的一部分，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》的文科新课程，让非理科专业的学生有机会探索视觉、液晶、色彩和全息术等光学现象。这些目标不仅影响到大学生，也影响到高中科学教师和他们的学生。通过实施将现代光学技术融入整个物理课程的活动，正在实现这些目标中的每一个。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.