Lattice field theory (LFT) is a highly relevant and successful tool in understanding nucleon structure and the Standard Model. Since it lies at the nexus of several advanced topics in physics, mathematics, and computer science, it is traditionally not encountered until graduate school. On the other hand, it is likely enlightening and motivating for beginning undergraduate students to have some exposure to modern research in theoretical physics. I report here on a semester-long experience guiding four first- and second-year undergraduates through a lattice calculation; in particular, we reproduce through our combined effort the pure gluon deconfinement temperature. Students managed simulations on a computing cluster, wrote Python scripts to perform very basic statistical analysis, gleaned some information from lattice literature and textbooks, and summarized aspects of what they learned in a final report. I attempted to impress on them a non-rigorous, heuristic understanding of how lattice calculations function. This class was carried out in the context of University of Utah's Student Research Initiative.

Driven damped oscillators are important not only in upper-level, undergraduate Classical Mechanics courses, but also in current physics research. To bring recent, exciting medical imaging physics techniques into the classroom and to make a complicated, mathematical topic more tangible, we designed a finite element simulation-based module. The module comprises three activities spread out over three class days. Students first employ a simple simulation to become acquainted with the software and to recover the familiar analytical result for a driven, damped oscillator. They then simulate and visualize the vibrational modes of an “intermediate” example such as a wine glass where analytical treatments are challenging. On the final day they investigate simulations and results from ongoing ultrasound-based medical imaging research in which the vibrational modes of blood clots subject to an external, sinusoidal magnetic driving force may, in the future, be used to make treatment decisions. We believe that by bringing relevant biological and medical physics applications into the classroom we can better engage students who might otherwise be less excited by the theory-heavy course.

Light has a fascinating property: it always travels the path that takes the least time between any two points. This is the motivating property behind optical phenomena such as reflection and refraction. The unreasonable economic efficiency of light is captured by a single proposition: the principle of least action (PLA) in optics. Unlike reflection and refraction, which emerge from optimizing a one-dimensional function, the PLA emerges from optimizing an infinite-dimensional functional. The PLA can be difficult for students to comprehend, as the formulation of the Lagrangian is often left unexplained. To this end, this paper presents various simulations to demonstrate the action principle, including a numerical solution to a generalization of the brachistochrone problem to an arbitrary refractive profile. The interactive simulations discussed in the paper are available at Ref. 1.

To consume media regarding science, one must critically evaluate their sources and content. I developed a first-year course that investigates the way that society perceives science in the media. The course explored the ethical and cultural implications of scientific communication in the news, on social media, and in the movies. We used critical thinking techniques to analyze the portrayal of complex issues of science from a variety of perspectives, and we aimed to gain a deeper understanding of scientific literacy in the media and the perils of misinformation.

In this talk, I will discuss a few particularly successful group activities in which we leveraged students' individual backgrounds and interdisciplinary expertise to analyze the complex relationship between science and the media.