October 7, 2023
This conference is dedicated to providing a variety of professional development opportunities in astronomy and physics education for college, high school, and middle school teachers across the state of Nebraska. A theme of this event is the use of instructional technology to improve our teaching of astronomy and physics. The conference begins with a keynote, an exhibition hall, and your choice of four breakout sessions. After lunch, the second keynote and longer workshop sessions close out the day.
Upon the first time visiting the registration portal, you will be asked to create an account and verify your email address. After completing these two steps, you can proceed to Upcoming Events and click on the Physics and Astronomy Summit 2023 registration.
Plenary Speakers
Dan Reichart, Ph.D.
Dr. Dan Reichart joined the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2002, where he is now a Professor of Physics and Astronomy and has been building “Skynet”. Skynet is an ever-growing collection of fully automated, or robotic, professional-quality telescopes under the control of software developed by Reichart’s team. Currently, Skynet spans four continents and five countries, and consists of nearly twenty optical telescopes, with mirrors ranging in size from 14 inches to 1 meter in diameter, as well as a 20-meter diameter radio telescope. To date, Dr. Reichart has published over 160 journal articles, including five in Nature and Science magazines, and has raised over $12 million for his research.
David Harwood, Ph.D.
Dr. David Harwood, Professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, will discuss "Repurposing Nebraska’s Cold War Infrastructure for Warm War Climate Science." Obtaining past records of Earth’s climate history of temperature and ice sheet changes is vital to our ability to improve numerical models to predict the rate and scale of future changes as our world warms. Polar Regions preserve archives of past climate history within and beneath ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica that have been accessed by UNL drillers, engineers, and scientists since the 1970s via ice coring, hot water drilling, and sediment drilling. An ambitious project is developing as part of UNL’s Grand Challenges - the Ice Coring & Education (ICE) Silo – to repurpose an abandoned Atlas-F missile silo in the Lincoln area into an ice drill testing and design center where new tools and instruments can be tested before deployment to remote field sites. Science and Technology Literacy and Climate Resilience will be a parallel focus of the ICE Silo through innovative public education and outreach. This project’s broad scope will enhance education in Nebraska and provide a one-of-a-kind research and testing facility for US and international polar scientists and engineers.
Ruckman Public Lecture 2023
The Stonehenge Observatory
Dr. Dan Reichart, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Friday
OCT 6
7:30 pm
Using a three-dimensional computer recreation of Stonehenge, we will explore the site's astronomical properties, primarily by inserting ourselves into the simulation and watching solar and lunar alignments in real time, as they occurred thousands of years ago. The program recreates all three major phases of Stonehenge's construction based on archaeological records, and the sun and moon simulations take into account atmospheric refraction, the gradually changing tilt of Earth's axis, and the sun's gravitational tug on the moon to ensure the utmost in accuracy.

Schedule | OCT 7, 2023
8:30 a.m.
Registration Opens
9:00 a.m.
Opening Welcome
Katherine Ankerson, Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Keynote | Our Place In Space!: Skynet-based Labs for Undergraduate Students”
Daniel Reichart, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
10:00 am
Continental Breakfast, Hallway Booths, Poster Session, & Socializing
Pearson Publishing
Mackenzie Lahmann
Nano Demos
Steve Wignall
Jody Sangster
Eclipse Tools
Evan Rich
Shams Hassiki
Alex Michalak
Morrill Hall
Rachel Scheet
Physics Demos?
Larry Browning
NASA Nebraska Space Grant
Tammy Blobaum
N-AAPT
Tom Brestel
Fun-sized Physics
Jocelyn Bosley
AAPT Physics Photo Contest
Todd Leif
Teaching Physics Concepts
Rebecca Udby
IceCube
Pawan Giri
Robert Tabb
Smartphone Sims
Deepika Menon
Kevin Lee
Formative Assessment
Sukaina Al-Hamedi
11:00 am
Breakout Sessions
11:00 am
Teaching Star Motions with Simulations
Kent Reinhard
Neutrino Telescopes
Robert Tabb, Pawan Giri
Modeling Instruction: A Physics Overview
Todd Leif
Cheap Physics Demos
Adam Davis
11:30 am
Teaching Star Motions with the Planetarium
Todd Young
Teaching Plate Tectonics
Mindi Searls
The Psychology of Making Predictions
Manda Williamson
Impact isn’t only for Asteroids
Jocelyn Bosley
12:00 pm
Spectroscopic Binaries
Kevin Lee and Evan Rich
Quantum Kits
Steve Wignall and Jody Sangster
Acceleration of an Atwood Rocket
Tom Brestel
12:30 pm
Labeling Tasks in HTML5
Chris Siedell and Clara Carper
Physics for Life Sciences
Keith Foreman
Building Solar Telescopes?
Larry Browning
1:00 pm
Lunch
2:00 pm
Keynote | Repurposing Nebraska’s Cold War Infrastructure for Warm War Climate Science
David Harwood, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
3:00 pm
Longer Breakout Sessions
Modeling Instruction: An Example from Astronomy
Ethan Van Winkle and Emma Schneider
Putting Skynet to Work for You!
Daniel Reichart
Augmented Reality?
Herman Batelaan and Kees Uiterwaal
4:30 pm
Evaluations, Door Prize Raffle, Closing
Sponsors
Center for Science, Mathematics, and Computer Education
Department of Physics and Astronomy
NASA Nebraska Space Grant
N-AAPT, Physics Education