I know that it may not be the best time for everyone especially amid the global pandemic. But many of our professional societies, realizing that we still need fora for contacting each other, are hosting our national meetings online. The American Physical Society just did this for their Annual April meeting. I think that this is an incredibly interesting thing to do, and I’m glad that they are making it open to all. Indeed, I have decided to give this as an extra credit opportunity for my class of intro physics students (calc-based, second semester). Below is the text of my assignment to them. Feel free to use it for ideas for your classes, advisees, what have you. The gist of it could be applied to any professional conference happening in this fashion.

Extra Credit Opportunity

I’ve just learned that the APS April meeting was cancelled in person, but is going virtual this year. I see this as a huge opportunity to expose you to physics and physicists in a professional setting. You can find the program online. Here is a brief guide to some of the acronyms that you will see:

  • LHC - Large Hadron Collider. This is a large particle accelerator on the France/Swiss border. They smash protons and anti-protons together. Here, we discovered the Higgs Boson.
  • LIGO - The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. We have two sites, one in Louisiana and the other in Washington. Here we detected gravitational waves for the first time.

If you do this, I’ll add 5 points to your end of year score (which should bump you up a grade level, for example, from a C+ to a B-). You’ll have to do these things:

Attend a plenary session (or other broad interest session) and write a ~1 page summary

Plenary sessions are a great opportunity to hear about some exciting physics going on at a broader level (rather than a technical talk). There are multiple examples on the program such as the following:

  • Kavli Foundation Keynote Plenary Session: Exploring the Cosmos
  • Plenary: Multi-Messenger Probes of Fundamental Physics
  • Plenary: Frontiers of Discovery: Flavor, Color, and Exoplanets
  • Showing of the Documentary “LIGO”

Your summary should focus on these items:

  • How do the researchers get their evidence?
  • Identify something of this research that you recognize from your physics classes. If you do an astrophysics talk, you’ll want to relate this to our study of optics (coming during the last week of the semester)
  • Plenaries usually have a big focus. Describe the groundbreaking results the speaker discusses

Attend a scientific session and write a ~0.5 page summary

The scientific sessions can be found here. Choose a session that interests you. I would recommend finding an Invited session, as these tend to be higher quality and slightly more general. Some sessions are live, others on demand. Learn about something cool, and tell me about it. Your summary should:

  • Define at least one scientific term used by the speaker.
  • Identify something of this reaserch that you recognize from your physics classes.
  • Discuss how the researchers obtained their evidence and present their conclusion.

Attend one of the two sessions for Undergrads and write a ~0.5 page summary

There are two activities specifically targeted towards undergrads described in the program. These are:

  1. A panel for those planning to attend graduate school.
  2. A panel for those planning a career in physics.

I think that the advice that they give in the second panel would be broadly applicable across science, math, and engineering. Your write up should:

  • Identify a piece of advice that you had not heard anywhere else
  • Discuss how you will consider changing your personal behavior (such as your study habits or extra-curricular activities) given this advice.

Summary

I expect the write ups to be at least 2 pages long. I will make them due on the final exam day. However, if you want to do this, you need to get on the ball. The conference runs April 18-21. And I have no idea how long on-demand sessions will be archived

This is an opportunity that is unlikely to occur again. Usually, attending this meeting would cost something like $500 for APS members (more for non-members). That obviously does not include the typical cost of travel to the host city, meals, and lodging while there. All told, I generally budget $2000-3000 for travel to a national meeting (more if it is in an expensive city like NYC and/or farther away).

The benefits of attending are not purely academic. Indeed, some of the benefits are getting the opportunity to expand your professional network. I highly recommend taking a look at these networking tips before attending this, or any other research/professional conference or meeting.