This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number 9752485. The materials were developed and assessed by Prof. Kelly Black (Mathematics), Prof. Dawn Meredith (Physics) and Prof. Karen Marrongelle (Mathematics), with help from many others. (Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. )
In this integrated course, the mathematical ideas are applied to and motivated by the work in physics; this connection gives the mathematics a rich context. But also, students' understanding of physics is improved by the early and frequent application of powerful ideas from calculus.
The term "studio" (initially used at Rensselear Polytechnic Intsutite) is meant to indicate that student are actively working in small during much of the class, that the lab portion of the class is integrated into the class, and that the class activities are based on the findings of education research. Other universities using similar active learning formats are RPI and SCALE-UP at North Carolina State University.
On the menu bar at the left, there are links to some of our materials in pdf format. The best place to start is the instructor's manual which gives an overview of the course. There are also slides from an overview of the course given to UNH faculty in Fall 2001.
Next, we provide both brief and detailed schedules that show how the physics and mathematics connected.
We also provide the classroom activities that we have written. [The physics activities were also supplemented by Tutorials in Introductory Physics by Lillian McDermott and Peter Shaffer (Prentice Hall)]. Both courses used standard (not reform) texts in their disciplines. Feel free to use these activities in your classroom, either as is or modified; but we would appreciate a little credit.
Finally, since one of our main goals in this course is improving student problem solving abilities, we have provided copies of our projects. These are real-world problems that require mathematics and physics to solve, and were solved by our students in groups, outside of class. We include a sample report write-up and a sample grading scheme.