MAS June Meeting

Launching the future astronomer: Innovation in physics education

June MAS Speaker: Dr. Duncan Carlsmith

Dr. Carlsmith will describe innovations in an introductory physics course providing modern research skills through immersion in big and small, arcane and applied science. Astrophysical topics include asteroids, exoplanets, black holes. Fun topics include computer vision, dappled light, the world’s simplest digital microscope, and mobile phone astrometry.

Professor Carlsmith is a faculty member of the Physics Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research in experimental elementary particle physics has spanned proton-antiproton collisions with the Collider Detector Facility at Fermilab Tevatron, detector development for the SDC experiment at the SSC, proton-proton collisions with the Compact Muon Solenoid detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, and a search for WIMP dark matter with the LZ two-phase liquid xenon detector at SURF.

Dr. Carlsmith is presently focused on innovation in teaching and learning, especially the introduction of computation into the physics curriculum, and is engaged in a variety of interdisciplinary research projects.

This meeting will take place in-person at our usual Space Place classroom location. It will also be streamed live to our Youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@madisonastronomicalsociety.