Technically, it's a varmint.

I'm playing around with this question of whether or not it's fair for physics to say to a biologist, "technically, the energy is in the field, not the sugar molecule."

I think it's akin to the math joke about fencing sheep (see recent post). Then, in looking for more research on the word "technically" (and what it implies about epistemic authority) I've come across another "technically" joke.

From Coulson, S. (2005). What’s so funny? Cognitive semantics and jokes. Cognitive Psychopathology/Psicopatologia cognitive 2(3): 67-78.)

"Technically" appeals to a folk model of language which has been dealt with more formally by Putnam. In the cultural model underlying technically, the meaning of words often relies on the existence of expert knowledge (e.g. chemistry in the definition of gold, or botany in the definition of an elm tree) that the individual speaker need not possess. Contrasting (7) and (8) (below) Kay argues that (7) is pragmatically odd, because varmint is a colloquialism, and thus falls outside the domain where expert judgments are required for naming.

(7) Technically, that's a rodent.
(8) # Technically, that's a varmint.

Interestingly, (8) is fine as a joke, and seems to be a meta-meta-linguistic comment on the need for expert naming conventions for the creature, or perhaps the need for expert naming conventions full stop.

David Sloan Wilson: Pro-Social Behavior

I was listening to a podcast with David Sloan Wilson on evolution and cities. In it, he cites Elinor Ostrom's work on the ingredients to make a stable group who manages local resources well (so forests, fisheries, oil, land, water, etc. - when a group has to manage something that is shared). These are... (from wikipedia):

Eight "design principles" of stable local common pool resource management:

1. Clearly defined boundaries (effective exclusion of external un-entitled parties);
2. Rules regarding the appropriation and provision of common resources that are adapted to local conditions;
3. Collective-choice arrangements that allow most resource appropriators to participate in the decision-making process;
4. Effective monitoring by monitors who are part of or accountable to the appropriators;
5. A scale of graduated sanctions for resource appropriators who violate community rules;
6. Mechanisms of conflict resolution that are cheap and of easy access;
7. Self-determination of the community recognized by higher-level authorities;
8. In the case of larger common-pool resources,organization in the form of multiple layers of nested enterprises, with small local CPRs at the base level.

With some modification, Wilson described these as 8 design features for pro-social behavior:

1. A strong group identity and a sense of purpose for everyone in the group.
2. Proportional cost and benefit (the benefits are scaled to what you do for the group). 
3. Consensus decision making. 
4. Monitoring. 
5. Graduated sanctions. Misbehavior -- prepared to escalate.
6. Fast, fair conflict resolution. Regarded as fair by all parties.
7. Local autonomy - ability to make their own decisions and organize their group there own way.
8. Polycentric governance - when groups are are nested, the nested groups have a similar structure. 

To which he adds two other features for schools:

1. A safe and secure environment.
2. Learning in any species does not take place when all of the costs are in the present and all the benefits are in the future.

I'm curious how well Inquiry meets those, and how those impact learning.

Aspen Center

The Aspen Center for Physics is available for weeks in the summer and one-week stays in the winter for physicists.  My friend Neal, who is a theoretical physicist, mentioned it to me - noting that they have a strong outreach/education requirement or desire and might be excited to get a PER proposal - and saying how great it is to have weeks of relatively unstructured time and with a passel of experts hanging out in one area, doing work.  FFPER serves some of that role for PER - unstructured time with colleagues -  but the opportunity to do extended work - not policy setting or per-canon kinds of things that happen at FFPER, but to advance theory - would be fun.

Looking it over, I'm not sure Aspen would be interested -- their emphasis is definitely theoretical physics, and so PER might be a hard sell.   But Aspen? In summer or winter? It might be worth a try. (Winter would be my preference.)

My thought is that energy/entropy would be interesting -- lots of folks have been thinking about this and it's closer to "theoretical physics" than many of the other hot topics in the community.

Anyway, I want to talk to folks at PERC about this. 

From the website:

Aspen prides itself on offering a quiet place in the summer to do theoretical physics as an individual, a small collaborative group, or in the more formal setting of a workshop. Any physicist may submit a workshop proposal to a committee of physicists composed of Aspen Center for Physics general members. The committee must choose the ideas they believe have the most merit for the following summer. Many factors enter into their decision:

Selecting the best science on the most current topics.

Scheduling workshops that achieve a balance of fields and maintain an even number of participants throughout the summer, though there are no strict formulas dictating this.

PRST-PER fees: Questions

I've never submitted anything to PRST-PER. For those of you who do, who pays the $1700 fee - grants, institutions? If it is a grant, did you budget this in originally? ($1700 +  40% overhead = $2380)

Does this dissuade you from submitting to PRST-PER?

They note on the website "If an author or the author's institution is unable to pay the APCs in full, the author may request a reduction of the APC by emailing..." - What does "unable" mean?

More on "technically"

Here's my one-sentence attempt to summarize why there is energy in food:

The statement from a well-known biology textbook (BSCS Biological Perspectives), “Nutrients from the food we eat contain potential energy,” is a statement regarding the possession of scarce resources necessary for life processes and not a statement regarding which object will gain kinetic energy in the next step of a sequence of pairwise interactions. 

The correctness of the claim should be evaluated from within the discipline.


BUT... not so fast.

The word “technically” not only suggests that a word may have two meanings, but it labels one of those meanings as “consistent with stipulations” -- stipulations made by “those persons in whom Society has vested the right to so stipulate.” (p. 734)  The other meaning is then derived from a less  “technical” or a more “folk theory” (Kay, 1987) model of the word.  

I think that physics has that vesting with respect to defining energy. Physics can tell biology, "technically you're wrong" when it comes to energy. (Telling the biologists that they ought to care, however, is another matter.  I'm not joking - I think that may be the hubris of physics: not the belief that physics has some deeper knowledge of energy, but the belief that this knowledge is relevant!)

Physics, of course, often looks to math for technical definitions (and then, just as often, ignores them). A common “math joke” plays on this idea:

An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician are shown a pasture with a herd of sheep, and told to put them inside the smallest possible amount of fence.

The engineer is first. He herds the sheep into a circle and then puts the fence around them, declaring, "A circle will use the least fence for a given area, so this is the best solution."

The physicist is next. He creates a circular fence of infinite radius around the sheep, and then draws the fence tight around the herd, declaring, "This will give the smallest circular fence around the herd."

The mathematician is last. After giving the problem a little thought, he puts a small fence around himself and then declares, "I define myself to be on the outside."

Technically, he’s correct.

To-do list, updated again

I'm really pleased by all the checked boxes!  Still a lot to do but it feels manageable.

By Monday, July 30:
☐  CBE-LSE paper: Advantages and challenges of using physics curricula as a model for reforming an undergraduate biology course (due Sept. 1) 
☐  PERC presentation (week of July 23)
☐  AAPT presentation (yikes!) 




While in Philly, NC and Seattle:
☐  develop action plan with Brian for TE grant (at EP and PERC)
☐  Chapter 3 of LSET - add instructor's guide/tips (this is perfect for long plane rides)
☐  review AJP paper (this is also perfect for long plane rides)

☐  CBE-LSE paper Dissolving disciplinary boundaries: Perception as a cross-disciplinary topic (due Sept. 1)  (Ask Irene about switching topics altogether; ENERGY?)



By end of August:
☐  Inquiry: finalize project and submit report (due September 29 - work on after Energy Project)  





✓  PERC poster (week of July 9) (should finish it tomorrow; working on it now) 
✓  PERC reviews
✓  Writing Project IRB (mostly done - unless we need an interview protocol - can finish it tonight)
✓  get tickets to east coast - July/Aug - then Seattle. (done)
✓  PERC abstracts submitted (done)
✓  CBE-LSE abstracts submitted (done - 2 of 'em! and approved!)
✓  PERC papers written and submitted (3 of 'em!)
✓  LaL activities into Word and uploaded to Dropbox (done! sent to publisher for review! 572 PAGES!)
X  ELA to Rachel (June 5?) (scratch! sorry, Rachel)
✓  IRB from Chico to NSF (done! approved!)
✓  FFPER-PS presentation (done! fun!)
✓  SABER poster (done! - just sent to printer!)

Snippet of a paper on Inhaling Calories

I have lots of snippets of papers and few full-blown papers. I have four papers in the works - two for Cell Biology Ed, one on the 5 Laws, and one on Lambertian Surfaces. Instead of finishing those, I  was up until 2 last night writing up a paper about whether or not we inhale (instead of ingest) calories.  Here's a snippet:



...If we’re consistent about where it is we locate potential energy, then technically it isn’t until you breathe in oxygen that your energy increases.

“Technically” and cognitive models
The use of the word “technically,” however, offers a clue about energy.  Consider an egg donor who says: “I guess I’m technically a mother,” or the claim that "technically the tomato is a fruit."  As Lakoff has noted, “technically” often suggests that there is more than one sense of a word - not just more than one definition, but more than one story or “cognitive model” about the world in which this word derives its meaning. For motherhood, there is a biological story of procreation (noted here with †) and there is a nurturing story of child-rearing (noted by *). Often the two overlap so that a mother† is a mother*, but not so often that the phrase “actually, my mother* isn’t my mother†” is meaningless.  Similarly, the claim, “technically speaking, the tomato is a fruit” (which leads to wordplay as someone replies that, consequently, “ketchup is technically a smoothie”), suggests two stories that define fruit. Fruit is defined both in terms of its function as part of a plant, and how fruit functions culinarily (a sweet we might put in a pie or on ice cream).

The term “technically” is not the only clue that words are being used in different ways; consider a friend’s recent comment: “My husband is the wife in our marriage.”  Here “husband” is defined in the context of gender and relationships, while “wife” is defined by traditional domestic roles. Or, as Lakoff notes, a phrase from an American newspaper: “Cambodia is Vietnam‡’s Vietnam§.” There is a story in which carving up the world into states is important, in which Vietnam‡ is defined; and there are stories of disastrous foreign wars, of which Vietnam§ is a prototype for Americans.

Above I note that a physicist might say that it is technically more accurate to claim that the energy is in the field rather than in the “lightweight” object in an interacting pair, but that both descriptions of energy are reasonable. The two stories at play here are (1) precise descriptions of objects and their properties that hold across length and time scales (energy is in the field) and (2) useful descriptions of objects and their properties that facilitate prediction and explanation at local time and length scales (energy is in the rock).

So when we say “technically it isn’t until you breathe in oxygen that your energy increases,” does this indicate that the biology textbooks, textbook evaluators, and science standards that are quoted above get the science wrong? Or are there two, equally valid scientific stories at play — one related to physicists’ cognitive models of the world, and the other related to biologists’ models? That is, what is the “story” in which biologists construct and use the concept of energy, and how might this story support the ways in which they talk about food as “having” energy?

... the punchline: A CENTRAL STORY for biologists is that ecosystems consist of organisms that have differential rates of survival and reproduction; these differential rates relate to the organisms’ abilities to secure resources necessary for survival and reproduction.

(Energy is hard to get; oxygen is not; gaining food means gaining energy... so locate energy in the scarce resource.)

Calories as an economic possession, not a physical one.

I'm trying on an explanation for why it is that we say food has calories.  I'm not 100% on much of the food/biochemistry here... and I'd love feedback.

1. When plants make more food than they need, they generally store it as starch (ergo the potato). They can use the stored starch in the winter, say, or at night, when they cannot produce all the food they need.

2. Most animals, however, store extra food as fat. I do not grow starchy regions around the midsection, but fat. This is because to turn carbs into fat, you (essentially) remove the oxygens and make the food storage mechanism a whole lot lighter.  Since there's plenty of oxygen floating around, you can get it back whenever you need it.  Much better to carry gasoline backpacking than wood, right?  Plants don't go backpacking so they don't care. Animals do, so they want to be lightweight. Sea creatures might not care about being lightweight, but they do want to be relatively buoyant (potatoes sink in fresh water). 

3. But that's only because of the abundance of oxygen.  If I'm a plant or an animal storing carbs as fats, and I did all this work separating oxygens from carbons, only to have some *other* plant or animal use up that oxygen, I would be bummed.  Or dead.  There's just so so much extra oxygen that I don't have to worry about it.

4. It's hard to imagine an inside-out world, where the oxygen is the stored thing and the glucose or fats are the excess, ejected thing, because oxygen is a gas and storing gas is hard. Much better to store a solid. (I was bothered for a while about why I only need to eat once a day but I need to breathe every single minute - but now I see this as "why evolve to store oxygen? it's everywhere!" we need both glucose and oxygen all the time, but one we store because it's not always accessible.  I'm pretty sure that decomposers can't store either food OR oxygen but I'm not 100% on that.)

5. The catch: when using a "possession" metaphor for energy, potential energy can usually be thought of as possessed by the lighter of two interacting objects (particularly if it is much lighter, or the heavier object is glued down and does not move). It's like saying that there is PE in a ball thrown up above the surface of the Earth. But this means I should think of the lighter-weight oxygen molecule as the thing possessing energy, not the gasoline, the fat, or the glucose.  BUT - if we're going to be consistent with that, then I *inhale* calories, I don't *eat* calories.

So why, then, would we locate the energy in the food molecule and not the oxygen?  I think it's a statement of economics -- we locate the calories in the scarcer object.  Supply and demand causes us to locate energy in the sugar or fat and not in the oxygen.

Does fuel have energy?

Sorry if I'm late to this party. I think it's something that Maryland (with their biology work) and SPU (with the energy project) have probably already considered.

What is a good way of thinking about how it is that a fuel (glucose, say, since I'm interested in biology) "has" energy? -- and from the start, let's say that I want to use a substance metaphor for energy where energy is located in objects.  Is the fuel like a mousetrap with the spring loaded? like a stack of bricks that's barely stable and could easily fall? is it like a see-saw with a rock on a "downward" seat (that may be launched if something heavy falls on the "upward" seat)? or is it like taking a level landscape and digging a hole and making a hill... in which case the  fuel is the hole, not the hill?

The best image I have for this is the gaussian gun, but I want an analogy to gravitational system. And there, I think the best analogy I have for this is the see saw --

But then would it be more accurate to say (within the metaphor of energy as substance) that eating something your body moves "down" into an energy well? you kind of lose calories? ... no... ? 

Back when I started my dissertation, I wanted to write about negative analogies - how the value of an analogy is in recognizing where it fails. I had been reading a bit of Derrida and Saussure (this b/c I was worried about my ability to write a dissertation, and so I took an english comp class at UW - without clearing this with the  powers that be - and this is what we read) and the idea of "difference" (and différance) loomed large: "concepts... are defined not positively, in terms of their content, but negatively by contrast with other items in the same system. What characterizes each most exactly is being whatever the others are not'."  I think it's worth playing around to try to find analogies like this - not because you'll find the perfect analogy, but because you won't.

Awarded!

It took 14 months - but it is officially funded. With my other two NSF grants winding down this fall, I am relieved. And I am so excited to have a reason to work with Brian! (I've been thinking non-stop about his recent post asking to "name" 1/m - that feels like a task with potential to be transformative)- plus Kevin Pugh and Rachel are involved, I have resources to pay students, a course release each year, summer salary, and will be able to travel to conferences without begging PERLOC for help.

And the proposal is one that I am still excited about (14 months later, that's a rare thing) - it's a way to say "here's what happens in the inquiry class; here's why it matters." - Like I'm being paid to explain why the things I value are important things to value.

The summary:

    Recent national documents and studies of post-secondary education call attention to the importance of developing a scientifically literate citizenry (e.g., Bybee, 1997) and the current shortcomings in our efforts to address this need (e.g., Augustine, 2005).  As science education researchers and curriculum developers work to improve instruction, a critical and under-researched aspect of this work is the degree to which in-class improvements to instruction and student learning have the ability to transform students’ scientific literacy beyond the classroom walls.
    With an eye on these broader goals, it is clear that the goals of physics instruction are not to simply produce higher gains on concept inventories or to improve scores on surveys of epistemological beliefs.  While these measures provide meaningful evidence of science learning, they are proxies for the broader goal of developing citizens and scientists who draw on their physics knowledge outside of classroom settings. Nonetheless, existing measures fail to identify whether or not students — even those with, for example, high scores on assessment like the Force Concept Inventory (Hestenes, Wells, and Swackhammer, 1992) — use their knowledge, skills and beliefs about physics outside of the physics classroom. Research in physics education, in particular, has focused most closely on the knowledge students develop within courses, and to a more limited extent, whether students transfer knowledge from one course to the next. The extent to which students’ physics learning influences their experience outside of school is dramatically under-researched. Such moments–experiences in which students actively use science concepts to see and experience their everyday world in meaningful, new ways - has been termed by educational psychologist Pugh to be “transformative experiences” (Pugh, 2004). 
    The goal of this proposal is to develop assessment tools to identify in what ways physics courses engender transformative experiences (TE), and, through the iterative development of these assessment tools, examine the nature of transformative experiences and the classroom practices that foster them.  Such work will lay the groundwork for further transforming undergraduate education in the sciences by: (1) connecting physics education research with the body of research on transformative experience, providing a language for what has previously been an inchoate goal of physics instruction and an under-researched aspect of physics education; (2) developing assessment tools to allow instructors and researchers to quickly examine the prevalence of transformative experiences in physics classrooms; (3) investigating the nature of transformative experience, by providing case studies of students’ experiences; and (4) examining courses rich in transformative experiences to understand the instructional practices that foster TE.

Advantages and challenges of using physics curricula as a model for reforming an undergraduate biology course

There was a call a while back for biology ed papers that explored the intersection of biology & physics ed. This seemed perfect for both the biology curriculum (which is patterned on PET) and the inquiry course. We submitted abstracts for each project, were told to proceed with the papers - due Sept. 1.

The first one to tackle (since it's highly collaborative) is the biology curriculum. Rather than writing a paper (which is also in the works) that describes the bio curriculum and findings, we thought that an explicit discussion about the connection to physics would be ideal for this journal.

The claim we want to make is that the reason that certain elements of the curriculum transfer smoothly and certain elements don't is because of epistemic difference (rather than "content" differences) between the two intro topics. I'd describe those differences as "deep mechanism" v. "surface mechanism." (Before I was saying: "fundamental ideas in biology are reducible and physics are not"... but I don't know.)  For example, energy diagrams focus in physics on precise interactions between, say, a cart and a track. In biology we focus on energy diagrams for a process - photosynthesis or cellular respiration. We can sweep the details under the rug. And if we TRIED to include them, most biology folks would have a really hard time tracking energy through that process.

Lindley Darden mentions "nested levels of mechanism" - which suggests mechanism certainly need not be irreducible.  Is physics usually irreducible - or even *defines* irreducible?

The main question I have is: is "deep (irreducible) mechanism" just good science? or is it imposing a physics epistemology on biology? If practicing biologists do not know the physical mechanisms underlying the phenomena they study then does that mean biologists do not need to know the underlying physics? or that biologists need better training?

This came up at the SABER conference in conversation with Vashti and listening to the biologists talk at her bonding-energy/ATP poster.  I didn't hear many conversations, but it seemed that the majority of biologists I *did* hear have a vague idea that ATP has high-energy O-P bonds and that it "releases" energy when those bonds are broken.  Characterizing the O-P as weak bonds, and requiring energy to go from ATP to ADP, was not part of their everyday biology knowledge.

NSF Funding Rates

I recently found this website, with information on NSF funding rates and time-in-review:
http://dellweb.bfa.nsf.gov/awdfr3/default.asp

You can see the effect of ARRA in 2009 spiking the number of awards. But ignoring that, focusing on 2011--

	FY	Number of Proposals	Number of Awards	Funding Rate	Average Decision Time (months)	Mean Award Duration (years)	Median Annual Size
NSF	2011	51,551	11,185	22%	5.59	2.60	$106,523

The biggest question I wondered was - is it worthwhile? What would be a "reasonable" funding rate? Should we be worried about our scientific workforce wasting their time writing proposals that don't stand a chance of funding?

Maybe as a first pass, the thing to consider is how much $ goes into writing grants and how much $ gets awarded. If those numbers are the same, then the grant funding just pays for the time already spent. Kind of a bum deal - but as a first pass, what would that be?

Let's say that each grant takes two "full" weeks of a university employee's time (80 hours - I think this is a bit high on the one hand, but not-too-crazy estimate - 80 manhours, so to speak - when you include the budget office, IRB, etc., it may even be conservative).  Let's say each faculty earns $60k (well, this faculty earns that. This, I reckon, is the very low end of reasonable estimates). So that two weeks (9-month salary) is worth $3000. A 22% chance of funding means that a zero-sum game (you're likely to recoup only the expenses incurred in writing the grant) is for a grant worth $12k median size... though with overhead, it's actually more like $24k. That would cover the cost of time it took to apply (not to do any actual work).
 
I also imagine that the funding rates include a lot of little awards - supplements, conferences, and people who are "tapped" to submit a proposal (I know of such people...). So let's instead consider a recent TUES funding rate:

Type 1

2011

1,059

165

16%

6.57

2.36

$84,999

Here the lower funding rate means a $33k median total grant would mean that the $ awarded just covers the time involved in writing the grants - not carrying them out. This is 16.5% of the total amount awarded.

I don't know what all of this means. I guess it's not as egregious as I'd feared. I wonder what this rate is in other arenas? - Like when Boeing makes a bid for a fighter plane contract, do they sink in $165M of employee time in hopes of winning a $1B award? Probably not...

One other bit of data that seems troubling - from the NSF overall:

	FY	Number of Proposals	Number of Awards	Funding Rate	Average Decision Time (months)	Mean Award Duration (years)	Median Annual Size
NSF	2011	51,551	11,185	22%	5.59	2.60	$106,523
	2010	55,558	13,014	23%	5.58	2.67	$105,623
	2009	45,215	14,642	32%	6.02	3.08	$96,737
	2008	43,907	11,024	25%	5.65	3.16	$80,775
	2007	44,104	11,352	26%	5.57	3.25	$79,956
	2006	42,049	10,317	25%	5.52	3.27	$75,448
	2005	41,597	9,757	23%	5.52	3.33	$73,002
	2004	43,488	10,254	24%	5.43	3.32	$72,649
	2003	39,745	10,721	27%	5.31	3.28	$75,000
	2002	34,811	10,230	29%	5.65	3.32	$62,607

We've gone from 35000 proposals to 52000 proposals.  And 10,000 awards to 11,000. (Now the workforce hasn't jumped that much - it must be more pressure from tenure committees?)

And then for EHR in that time frame:

	2011	4,660	807	17%	6.16	3.16	$149,625
	2010	5,056	931	18%	5.72	3.34	$152,080
	2009	3,702	1,011	27%	5.82	3.68	$151,447
	2008	3,357	974	29%	5.62	3.70	$125,000
	2007	3,760	772	21%	5.45	3.99	$108,577
	2006	2,964	728	25%	5.25	4.17	$121,812
	2005	3,554	707	20%	5.32	4.15	$85,944
	2004	4,303	805	19%	5.01	3.92	$93,935
	2003	3,781	825	22%	4.82	4.04	$98,096
	2002	3,651	899	25%	5.14	3.69	$76,250

The EHR funding rate was 25% in 2002 and is at 17% in 2011 - there were 1000 more applicants in 2011 (than in 2002), and 92 *fewer* awards... though the award size did double.

Why are we simultaneously trying to recruit people into science and discipline-based education while we cut funding for science? It makes no sense. Who will employ them? with what funds? With states also ALSO cutting their funding of universities, who is paying for science? How can the young scientists stand a chance?

Seems to me that applying for the Chico job in 2007 was a very lucky thing; people were still hiring and NSF was about to have funding rates that would help junior faculty (though - let's be clear - they're not that much above 2002's rates).  I was awarded the first grant I wrote (inquiry) - it got me tenure (early) - and has laid a solid foundation for two more (recently funded or about-to-be-funded) NSF grants.

To-do list, updated.

Summer break is 2/3 over.  (If you count teaching at the Energy Project as "summer break" - and I think I do. It's like a long run - draining, but restorative.) - Now a re-examination and re-shuffling of the to-do list is in order - I'm not too far off track, but two CBE-LSE (bio/physics ed) papers might be a stretch... especially since they aren't even partially written. Not even as a blog post - but maybe that's the way to get started. If I get PERC things finished this week I think I'm well poised to get CBE-LSE done on time:

Summer:
☐  PERC poster (week of July 9) (should finish it tomorrow; working on it now)
☐  Writing Project IRB (mostly done - unless we need an interview protocol - can finish it tonight)
☐  CBE-LSE paper: Advantages and challenges of using physics curricula as a model for reforming an undergraduate biology course (due Sept. 1)  (will be starting this this week - try to finish before PERC)
☐  CBE-LSE paper Dissolving disciplinary boundaries: Perception as a cross-disciplinary topic (due Sept. 1) (will be starting this week - try to finish before PERC)
☐  PERC presentation (week of July 23)
☐  develop action plan with Brian for TE grant (at EP and PERC)
☐  Inquiry: finalize project and submit report (due September 29 - work on after Energy Project) 


Fall:
☐  energy iPad app, Lauren, Richard (September)
☐  Bubbles (October)
☐  Lambertian surfaces (November)
☐  Inventing Work paper (Xmas? Thanksgiving?)

✓  get tickets to east coast - July/Aug - then Seattle. (done)
✓  PERC abstracts submitted (done)
✓  CBE-LSE abstracts submitted (done - 2 of 'em! and approved!)
✓  PERC papers written and submitted (3 of 'em!)
✓  LaL activities into Word and uploaded to Dropbox (done! sent to publisher for review! 572 PAGES!)
X  ELA to Rachel (June 5?) (scratch! sorry, Rachel)
✓  IRB from Chico to NSF (done! approved!)
✓  FFPER-PS presentation (done! fun!)
✓  SABER poster (done! - just sent to printer!)