Education and Public Outreach
Over the past few years I've had the great fortune to interact with the public as a scientist. It seems that the mysteries revealed and left to be answered by scientific progress builds a common curiosity held by everyone. When given the opportunity people enjoy sitting down and learning about what science has discovered. I'm saying this both as an physicist and someone who enjoys listing to other scientists.
In the sections below I describe some of the public outreach activities I've been involved with over the last few years.
Adopt A Scientist
The
Adopt a
Scientist program was a pilot project in celebration of the World Year of
Physics in 2005. High school students conducted email interviews
with scientists and reported back on their findings to their classes.
Through these reports, the class would build a picture of the wide
variety of opportunities available through science.
The purpose of the program was to expose high school students to what it means to be a scientist and the wide variety of careers and lifestyles that are available with a science education. Even in the best high school science classrooms it is difficult for students to gain an understanding of how science is pursued in academia and industry. This program seeked to help teachers in addressing that problem by setting up email-interviews between high school students and scientists.
As a participating scientist in the program we were given a set of thirteen predrafted questions from which the students would select five or so. In preparation for the interviews I compiled my answers to each question into a single pdf document that can be viewed here.
Expanding Your Horizons
Expanding Your Horizons™ in Science, Mathematics, and
Engineering (EYH) is a one day conference designed for
6th, 7th, and 8th grade girls to
learn about opportunities in scientific and technical careers. By
aiming the conference at pre high school girls the hope is to spark an
interest in taking mathematics and science courses in high school,
and, as a result, keeping opportunities open for a career in areas
that require mathematical skills.
As part of the conference Michelle Larson, Kristina Zaleski, and I co-instructed the workshop "Do You See What I See? Observing the Distant Universe." In this workshop we briefly covered how observations at multiple frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum conveys different information to astronomers about stars and galaxies. This concept was reinforced by using a filter wheel activity designed by Michelle Larson. We also highlighted how the developing field gravitational wave astronomy will open a new window to the celestial sky.
In preparation for the EYH workshop I worked with Michelle Larson, Shane Larson, and Kristina Zaleski in developing a hands on gravitational wave icebreaker activity for students. The idea behind the activity is that small groups are given a noisy signal that contains a simplified gravitational wave signal. They are also given six templates (noiseless models of what the true signal may look like). The students are then told that there is a relationship between the noisy signal and one template; their job is to find the correct template. For a full description see the activity's webpage or the associated Physics Teacher article.
Montana Science Olympiad
I've been involved with the Montana Science Olympiad twice. The first time I was an evaluator for an astronomy event called "Reach for the Stars."
The second time, I was an event captain for the "Physics Lab" competition. As a captain, I was charged with designing a physics laboratory experiment based on thermodynamic principles. The result was a three part laboratory style exam. In the first part the students are given a ruler, string, a graduated cylinder, and three small metal samples. The competitors are then ask to measure the densities of each sample. The second portion of the exam is a standard textbook problem on the second law of thermodynamics. The final part of the exam requires the teams to measure the effective heat capacity of a calorimeter.
If you're interested in seeing the details of the event, the original event documents and the score sheets used to evaluate the teams are available below.
Science Olympiad Event (35 KB)
Science Olympiad
Score Sheet (42 KB)