Dr Forrest Bradbury, from Amsterdam University College, will present a Department of Physics seminar with a talk entitled, "Flipping" the physical science lab course and "Making" critical researchers". 

While "cookbook" style physics lab courses present students with clear and nicely structured experimental setups, such courses often suffer from low student ratings and little or even negative impacts on students' disciplinary development.  Open-ended lab assignments, on the other hand, give students the freedom & responsibility of defining their own experimental methods and have been proven to be effective in teaching students to critically engage and use the scientific method.  However, practising the full research cycle requires that students have significant time with the laboratory equipment – presenting both financial and logistical barriers.

During my time here at UCT, I will be developing hardware and software tools for a new type of laboratory course for the physical sciences:  replacing expensive and space intensive lab equipment with ubiquitous solid state sensors (either hooked up to Arduinos or already inside our mobile phones and "internet of things" devices) which are matched with apps and open source code for data analysis. 

With powerful detectors in their pockets, the world offers itself as the students’ laboratory, yielding reams of data - and thus real world feedback - to steer their self-designed explorations.  Students' projects are supported by (and take part in) the "maker" movement's resources of open-source software and hardware.  As a bonus, such a course gives students transferable 21st century skills for their later careers, as more sectors are transformed by data analytics, remote sensing, and IoT devices. 

This talk will thus motivate and discuss how portable sensors can change the way students learn in the experimental physical sciences.