I am giving a talk at the Fall 2026 meeting of Michigan AAPT titled “Exercise 0: Teaching Classical Mechanics Alongside the Labor, Credit, and Politics of Physics.”
Exercise 0 is the first problem on every homework in my PHY 321 (Classical Mechanics I) course at Michigan State University. Across eight short assignments, students engage with questions about whose labor builds physics, how we credit scientific work, who has access to knowledge, and whose land and sky our telescopes use. The physics content doesn’t shrink, and students aren’t told what to conclude. They are asked to decide how they want to take part in physics. In the talk I shared the design, examples of student responses (over 90% completion), and what I would change next time, mainly adding in-class discussion.
The course materials, including Exercise 0, are open educational resources (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) at dannycab.github.io/phy321msu.