Laboratory Adaptations for an Undergraduate Optics Initiative

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Physics (13) A new optics initiative at Calvin College is providing students with marketable technicaltraining in the optical sciences and introduces an optics concentration and an optical-technology minor into the physics curriculum. The programs target students in physicsand engineering, as well as pre-service teachers preparing to teach science in high school.Curricular changes include the reconfiguration of several physics courses and theintroduction of an intermediate-level course entitled Phys 246: Waves, Optics, andOptical Technology. Based on a mentor/apprentice pedagogical model, this course willmake use of a fully integrated lab-plus-lecture format, an approach with which Calvin'sscience-education specialists have already had great success in courses for pre-serviceelementary school teachers. The new pedagogical method will also influence the way inwhich students are mentored in a new upper-level lab course, Phys 383-384: AdvancedOptics Laboratory. The project involves adaptations of labs for both the intermediateand the advanced courses, so that the optics initiative can effectively address its two-foldgoal of cultivating technological knowledge and skill and providing a fresh model ofteaching by hands-on inquiry.The labs are adapted from labs used at other institutions and from theresearch projects of the PI and Co-PI. The curriculum for Phys 246 is taken largely froma course at the University of Maryland taught by Dr. Wendell T. Hill, who isproviding advice on a continuing basis. Certain individual labs (at both intermediate andadvanced levels) are based on existing experiments and input from faculty at Caltech,Harvard, Harvey Mudd College, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.Still others are a natural outgrowth of the PI's research on laser-cooled and trappedatoms and plasma diagnostics and the Co-PI's research on diode-laser applications andspectroscopy.