Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2010
Volume 55, Number 1
Saturday–Tuesday, February 13–16, 2010; Washington, DC
Session S15: Physics Outreach |
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Sponsoring Units: FEd Chair: Peggy Norris, Sanford Underground Laboratory at Homestake Room: Harding |
Monday, February 15, 2010 3:30PM - 3:42PM |
S15.00001: The SPS Intern Experience: Preparing the 2009 SPS Outreach Catalyst Kit Erica Watkins, Mary E. Mills, Scott A. Stacy, Gary White, Kendra Rand The Society of Physics Students' (SPS) Outreach Catalyst Kit -- also known as the SOCK, is a collection of exploratory physics and science activities specifically designed for SPS Chapters and collegiate physics departments to use in outreach presentations to local elementary, middle and high school students. New SOCKs have been prepared every year since 2001 by SPS national interns and office staff. This year's SOCK has a theme centered around Galileo Galilei and his experiments, in honor of 2009 being the International Year of Astronomy. The SOCK contains lessons, demonstration, and activities that span topics such as optics and the refracting telescope, inclined planes and the formation of moon craters. In this talk, I will highlight the procedure SPS uses in preparing and testing the SOCK activities at various pilot sites as well as discuss my overall experience as an SPS intern. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, February 15, 2010 3:42PM - 3:54PM |
S15.00002: After-school, Activity-based Physical Science in a Low-income, Rural County Staci Small, Ben Ryan, Nik Vann, Christopher Moore Longwood University's Society of Physics Students conducted a six-week, activity-based after-school program for middle-school students in partnership with a rural low-income school system. Hands-on learning activities were designed and implemented to improve content knowledge in typically low-scoring standardized testing areas in the physical sciences. For example, we used colored yarn of different lengths to help demonstrate visible light in the electromagnetic spectrum along with the relationship between wavelength and frequency. Other topics were explored, such as reflection, refraction, sound and inference. At the end of the six-week program, a science exposition was held where the students came to Longwood and participated in more sophisticated experiments, such as liquid nitrogen demonstrations. After the exposition, Longwood University held a small awards ceremony in which the parents were invited to watch their students receive an award congratulating them on completing the program and welcoming them into the Lancer Discovery Club. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, February 15, 2010 3:54PM - 4:06PM |
S15.00003: Undergraduate Research in Experimental Granular Physics Dustin Kimble, Jon Bougie I will present an ongoing undergraduate experimental research project in granular physics. I am an active part in an undergraduate research team that is investigating the self-organization of granular media. Using a modified subwoofer, I have built an apparatus to fluidize grains so that granular phenomena can be examined. When shaken vertically and sinusoidally, grains self-organize into patterns such as squares, stripes, and hexagons. Future investigations of other granular phenomena will also be discussed. Finally, this project illustrates the importance of undergraduate research and of student initiative in establishing research opportunities. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, February 15, 2010 4:06PM - 4:18PM |
S15.00004: Optics and Light Activities for Teachers of all Grade Levels from Easily Obtainable Supplies Richard Lindgren, Curtis Hendricks, Lynn Lucatorto, Thomas McNeilus, Stephen Thornton Several hands-on activities in light and optics covering selected topics will be discussed in the context of home labs and how such activities can be incorporated into a distance-learning or online web-based course utilizing the latest communication technologies and the Internet. The presentation will focus on activities that can be constructed from easy to obtain supplies as well as a commercially available kit that we are having made available. Activities for teachers at the elementary level will focus on understanding light rays, shadows, and reflection from plane surfaces; at the middle school level will focus on curved mirrors and lenses, dispersion, and drawing ray diagrams; at the high school level will focus on Snell's law, the lens equation, wave interference, polarization, Young's experiment, and diffraction. A distance-learning, web-based course based on these home labs will be described. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, February 15, 2010 4:18PM - 4:30PM |
S15.00005: Online Astronomy Resources from the American Museum of Natural History Robert Steiner The American Museum of Natural History, one of the world's largest natural history museums, is the locus of a rich array of scientific research, exhibition and educational resources through its Department of Astrophysics, its Rose Center for Earth and Space and its Hall of Meteorites. For the past decade, the Museum's National Center for Science Literacy, Education and Technology has leveraged these assets to create a panoply of web-based resources for students, teachers and the general public. This session will review several of these resources, including the \textbf{\textit{Digital Universe}} (a three-dimensional mapping of the Universe); \textbf{\textit{The Solar System}} (an online graduate course for K-12 teachers); multimedia highlighting searches for exoplanets and ultra-high-energy cosmic rays; \textbf{\textit{Journey to the Stars}} (a DVD version of the current planetarium show); and the astronomy section of \textbf{\textit{Ology}} (a website for children ages 7 and up). A copy of the \textbf{\textit{Journey to the Stars}} DVD will be provided to all attendees. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, February 15, 2010 4:30PM - 4:42PM |
S15.00006: Neutrinos and dark matter in the Black Hills Margaret McMahan Norris, Bentley Sayler Where in the U.S. could you walk into a hardware store and be asked about neutrinos? It happens regularly in the Black Hills of South Dakota, where preliminary design is in progress for the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL), a planned NSF Major Research Experimental Facility Construction (MREFC) initiative to be located at the former Homestake gold mine in Lead, SD. DUSEL has physicists buzzing too, as the particle, astro-, and nuclear physics communities have all identified the need for a new laboratory deep beneath the Earth's surface to address some of the most compelling, transformational science at the frontiers of their disciplines. Elusive particles such as neutrinos and WIMPS (a possible candidate for dark matter) -- though they spark the imagination - are equally elusive when trying to explain to students and the public. That will be the task of the Sanford Center for Science Education, planned to be the education arm of DUSEL. Early prototypes of future programs at the education center are now under development, ranging from professional development for teachers to classroom tours to working with American Indian educators. These programs, which are building capacity for the future education center, will be discussed. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, February 15, 2010 4:42PM - 4:54PM |
S15.00007: Education and Outreach for Neutrino and Dark Matter Physics Katherine Guenthner Science education and public outreach programs are designed to engage and excite the community in many fascinating fields, including Neutrino and Dark Matter physics. I will discuss a diverse program of education and outreach implemented by the Physics faculty at the MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Science, and highlight some methods and strategies they employ to communicate recent advances in Neutrino and Dark Matter research to a wide audience. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, February 15, 2010 4:54PM - 5:06PM |
S15.00008: HEP data in education and outreach efforts Matt Bellis The High Energy Physics (HEP) community has recognized that data preservation is an important part of our future and has organized an international working committee to address this. Beyond the continued data mining which can take place, there is a great opportunity to use these datasets as teaching tools, both for university students and an interested general public. The {\sl B{\scriptsize A}B{\scriptsize AR}} experiment at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has a dedicated group working on the preservation effort; the education and outreach effort is a significant goal of this group. Retention of knowledge and conceptual understanding is enhanced by active participation in problem solving -- a challenge that can be addressed with more involved projects than currently available to the general public from the HEP outreach centers. We are developing a framework that will make subsets of the {\sl B{\scriptsize A}B{\scriptsize AR}} dataset available to others, along with computing tools and tutorials, so that interested parties can work through either parts or the whole of a variety of analyses. With the proper framework, this may be used by other HEP experiments as a way to make their physics available and teachable beyond our community. The scope of this project may be extended to teach the next generation of particle physicists, who may lack immediate data, by providing them with datasets with which to prepare themselves for upcoming experiments. [Preview Abstract] |
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