OVERCOMING THE PROBLEM OF DECREASING THE NUMBER OF PHYSICS STUDENTS Maja Stojanović and Elvira Đurđić University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Sciences, Department of Physics, Trg Dositeja Obradovića 4, 21000 Novi Sad, Serbia SEEMPE 2012 1st South-Eastern European Meeting on Physics Education 2012, Ljubljana
Kids do an awful lot of sitting in chairs and listening to people tell!
At the present time we are witnessing the evidence showed considerable reduction in the number of students in physics. In order to overcome this problem we take the following steps: - Mentoring talented students of special math classes, which have more classes in physics in relation to other High School in science direction - student competitions in all four national and one international level - promotion in Secondary schools - actively participating in the Festival of Science and the Researches Night - Theater performance - TV shows
Mentoring talented students Mentoring talented students of special math classes, which have more classes in Physics in relation to other High School in science direction. Professors from Faculty teach these students. Such classes except in Novi Sad, exist in Belgrade, Nis and Kragujevac In these classes there are the best students, who are very talented for Mathematics and Natural Sciences
Student competitions Contest Committee (which prepares the problems) are professors and assistants of corresponding faculties for Physics (Belgrade, Novi Sad, Niš). When composing the problems, they have to respect the psychophysical capabilities of the contestants, from the point of view of the degree of problem complexness as well as the time necessary for the solution. Special emphasis lies on the correlation of programs of Physics and Mathematics
CONTESTANTS two basic groups: students of 6,7 and 8th grade of the elementary school high school students, all four grades (the general high school gymnasium and corresponding professional high schools: electro technical, medical, chemical...). LEVELS OF CONTESTS There are four levels of contests following after the school eliminations: community, regional, state and Serbian Olympiad
CONTENTS OF THE CONTESTS At higher levels (state and federal) besides theoretical problem solving, there appear gedanken experiments and finally experimental problems. The experimental problems at Serbian Olympiad are approached by only a small group (up to 15) of best-ranked contestants after the theoretical problem solving. The first 5 in the General Physics group (complete high school Physics) represent the team for Physics Olympics. In elementary school, after Serbian Olympiad there is one more level. The best 8-10 students, have 3 weekends preparation from Physics, Chemistry and Biology. After that they have test, and we chose 6 of them which will represent the team for International Junior Science Olympiad.
An important issue is the complaint system. We consider the possibility of complaining to be rather important, since it help the students to achiv a certain degree of self-confidence. At lower levels, the students present their complaints directly to the jury since the jury is usually operative only during the contests. NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS starting from the lowest to the highest level is of order of 1500 students, so that such type of contests not only stimulates students to deal with physics but also popularizes physics at all education levels including all factors (parents, school )
Festival of Science Every year our Department have workshop, and do Hands on experiments.
Theater performance http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlz6d6szlee &feature=player_embedded
Researches Night
Promotion in Secondary schools Starting from October, till the end of April we visit Secondary schools, all over the Province Vojvodina and promote our Department. Sometimes, in these promotions besides the representation of Faculty, we have popular lectures In this period we usually visit around 50 schools. Informing students about curicula, research at Physics department, job opportunities, some scholarships Getting their e-mail to inform them about activities such as Sciense festivals, video conferences, interesting lectures etc. Plans for future- visiting schools with Theater performance
TV shows Café Scientifique- British Council in Serbia and Serbian Broadcasting Corporation project, this is the third season Diverse mix of four young, bright and extrovert scientists who tell stories about the latest developments in the fields of science and technology The target audience are young people slightly interested in science, age 18-35 Approx. 300 000 people is watching us
Who are the hosts? Momir Đekić, electrical engineer, Serbian national FameLab winner from 2010 Ivana Horvat, astronomer & astrophysicist, national FameLab runner-up from 2008 Vladimir Bajić, biologist, winner of the Audience Award from the 2011 national FameLab final in Serbia Elvira Đurđić, physicist, Serbian FameLab finalist from 2011
How does it look like? Topics? Scenario Biomimicry Asteroids Digital forensics Black holes Modern physics (Higgs boson) GMO (Geneticaly modified organisms) Radioactivity Short stories outside the studio- speaking with experts, visiting labs, doing some experiments, or making introduction to the story Conversation with an expert in studio Planets outside the Solar system Energy of Sun (solar collectors) Questions of the audience in studio Magnetic storms 10 episodes are made http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azkkofe7k4o
Some pictures from shooting
Also British Council project, science blog, follows the TV show Every week one new blog post for all 4 TV show hosts, in total 4 new blog posts/week In week before and after the TV show was on air we have to connect in topic the show and the blog post Approx. 3000 readers/month http://blog.britishcouncil.org/serbia/
For the teachers we organize a one-day seminar, dedicated to specific areas of physics, where in addition to interesting lectures we have workshop where teachers, organized into a small groups, perform»hands on experiments«and at the end have a discussion.
Conclusions Remember to always have fun with your science experiments and don t worry if your experiments don t come out as you would expect some of the greatest scientific discoveries have been made by mistake As a result of these activities, we can point out that this year for the first time, we have more students than Ministery of Education predict by the budget.
THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION!