physics

Wendy Adams

Wendy Adams is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Wendy Adams rather than just read about it. In short: Wendy K. Adams is an American physics educator.

Key takeaways

Wendy Adams belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Wendy Adams to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Wendy Adams from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Wendy K. Adams is an American physics educator. She is known for her work on interactive educational simulations of physics including the PhET Interactive Simulations project, on the effectiveness of peer discussions on conceptual understanding of physics, on measurement of student beliefs about physical concepts, on public beliefs about what it is like to be a physics teacher, and on other aspects of physics education. She is a research professor of physics in the Colorado School of Mines and the executive director of Get the Facts Out , a national multi-society effort to repair the reputation of the teaching profession.

Education and career Adams is originally from Colorado, and graduated from the University of Northern Colorado in 1994 with a bachelor's degree in physics. She earned a master's degree in physics from the University of Colorado Boulder in 1996, and returned to the University of Colorado Boulder for a Ph.D. in physics with a specialty in Physics Education Research, which she completed in 2008 under the supervision of Carl Wieman. She became a faculty member at the Colorado School of Mines in 2017.

Research Adams focuses her research on designing curriculum and formative assessment. She works on problem-solving evaluation and has developed several improvements. An example of her developed curricula is the Explore Sound project, which involves K-14 materials for acoustics. Her evaluation work includes CLASS, a tool to measure physics students' perceptions of the topic and how they learn, and interface design guidelines for PhET Interactive Simulations. Her latest development is the PTaP instrument: perceptions of teaching as a profession.

Recognition Adams was the 2018 winner of the Excellence in Physics Education Award of the American Physical Society (APS). The award cited her "systematic development, dissemination, and evaluation of the physics education tool, PhET Interactive Simulations project, used world-wide by millions of students and their teachers". In 2019 she was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society, after a nomination by the APS Forum on Education, "for impactful physics education research and the subsequent development of assessments in the areas of problem solving, student beliefs, and teacher preparation, leading to a range of improvements such as increased student learning and reductions in physics teacher shortages".

References

External links Wendy Adams publications indexed by Google Scholar

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Wendy Adams

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Wendy Adams claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Wendy Adams before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Wendy Adams ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Wendy Adams

In research: Wendy Adams appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Wendy Adams in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Wendy Adams is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 21st-century American academics, 21st-century American physicists, 21st-century American women physicists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Wendy Adams outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Wendy Adams in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Wendy Adams means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Wendy Adams out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Wendy Adams in simple terms?

Wendy K. Adams is an American physics educator.

Why does Wendy Adams matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Wendy Adams?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Wendy Adams.