This article describes a general education course offering, Physics and the Arts. During the development of this course, physics and arts faculty collaborated closely. We cover the usual physics phenomena for such a course--light, color, and sound--in addition to gravity, equilibrium, and spacetime. Goals of the course are to increase students'…

We designed a physics course for prospective elementary and middle school teachers to foster aspects of scientific thinking recommended in reform documents. Because the elementary school curriculum focuses heavily on literacy, we also explicitly integrated physics and literacy learning in this course. By integrating physics and literacy learning,…

Undergraduate research experiences (UREs) have been endorsed as a powerful instructional tool in higher education; however, relatively little is known about the long-term effects of participation in these programs. The purpose of this study was to investigate the educational enhancements of URE participation from the perspective of practicing…

Discusses current research in thermonuclear fusion with particular emphasis on the problem of confining hot plasma. Recent experiments indicate that magnetic bottles called tokamaks may achieve the necessary confinement times, and this break-through has given renewed optimism to the feasibility of commercial fusion power by the turn of the…

Traces individual physicists and financial considerations associated with the historical development of academic research and research facilities in physics at the University of California (Berkeley), California Institute of Technology, and Stanford University from the 1890's to the 1930's. (SL)