Draw Your Physics Homework? Art as a Path to Understanding in Physics Teaching

The persistent fear of physics by learners motivated the author to take action to increase all students' interest in the subject via a new curriculum for introductory college physics that applies Greene's model of Aesthetic Education to the study of contemporary physics, utilizing symmetry as the mathematical foundation of physics as well as the conceptual link between physics and the arts. The author describes the curriculum and suggests how students' drawings and written commentaries can provide insights into students' preferred learning modalities, promote understanding of abstract concepts through visualization, and reveal students' preexisting attitudes toward science. Outcomes align with the goals of improving students' attitudes toward physics, indicated by their comments, written work, and results of the Maryland Physics Expectations Survey.