AAPT Digi Kits are specially selected multimedia collections that bring together the work of many authors, content developers, editors, and peer reviewers. The goal of the Digi Kits is to promote interdisciplinary explorations that integrate physics with life science, chemistry, and earth science in a format that blends modeling, hands-on investigation, video, and interactive digital representations.
The AAPT Digi Kits are curated, edited, and annotated by Caroline Hall, managing editor and eBook developer for the AAPT and the ComPADRE Digital Libraries in Physics Education.
Please contact chall@aapt.org with questions, suggestions, or to report errors.
Relevant Links:
ComPADRE Digital Libraries in Physics Education
The DNA Science Digi Kit was inspired by a 2011 article in The Physics Teacher magazine, titled "How Rosaline Franklin Discovered the Helical Structure of DNA: Experiments in Diffraction", authored by Gregory Braun, Dennis Tierney, and Heidrun Schmitzer, Xavier University Department of Physics.
The turn-key Lesson Plan with Assessment, Teacher Guide, and Student Worksheet were authored by AAPT K12 Program Manager Rebecca Vieyra.
Special thanks go out to the following people and organizations:
- PBS Learning Media for the interactive tutorial, "Anatomy of Photo 51"
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute for the "DNA Double Helix Discovery" videos
- Scientific American's "Scicurious Brain" series; excerpt titled "X-Ray Crystallography: 100 Years at the Intersection of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology"
- National Library of Medicine: The Rosalind Franklin Papers
- Physics Education Technology Project (PhET) for the simulation, "Wave Interference"
- Paul Hewitt and Dean Baird, authors of the PhET Teacher Contribution titled "The Fringe of Optics"
- NOVA: "Journey Into Human DNA" animation and "Rosalind Franklin's Legacy"
- PBS Documentary, "DNA - The Secret of Life"
- James D. Watson, PhD, 1962 Nobel Laureate, retired director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, for his TedTalks video, "How We Discovered DNA"
- Anna Ziegler, playwright of "Photograph 51"
- National Geographic article: "Six Women Scientists Who Were Snubbed Due to Sexism"
- Brenda Maddox, author of "The Double Helix and the Wronged Heroine", Nature, 23 January 2003.
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute: DNA Multimedia Collection
- Benjamin Crowell, PhD, for his open-source textbook Light and Matter
- Rod Nave, Georgia State University Department of Physics/Astronomy, author of "Hyperphysics"
- Betsy Skrip and Sera Thornton, co-authors of "The Structure of DNA" video, published by Massachusetts Institute of Technology