A Teacher Workshop for High School Science Educators
Friday, March 15, 2013 8:00 am to 5:00 pm at University of California, Berkeley
This workshop will focus on using cloud chambers and Geiger counters to help teach the principles of radioactivity and radiation. Participants will receive a wealth of materials – a cloud chamber kit and Geiger counter, workbooks, and classroom activities. This workshop will include a tour to the Advanced Light Source or Cyclotron and lectures by leading scientists. The educational material is targeted for high school science teachers, grades 9-12.

Information about the workshop is available online: http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/Highschool-Teachers-workshop.

Preliminary Topics

 What is radiation?
 How is it measured?
 Where does it come from?
 What experiments can you do in your school?

Sponsors: The American Nuclear Society (ANS) and the Northern California Chapter of the Health Physics Society are proud to sponsor this workshop. Scientists and engineers from the Northern California Section of both professional societies (ANS-NCS and NCCHPS) are presenting the material. The UC Berkeley, Nuclear Engineering Department, is generously providing facilities for the event.

Funding for the workshop is provided in part by the Northern California Section of the American Nuclear Society, in part by the Northern California Chapter of the Health Physics Society, and through individual and organizational contributions to the American Nuclear Society (ANS).

Educational Opportunities for Your Students
See the box on page four for information about a nuclear science and engineering summer camp for juniors and seniors and science and engineering scholarships for graduating high school seniors.

A tentative schedule is as follows:
8:00 a.m. Registration – Coffee and Donuts
8:30 a.m. Welcome, introduction by Prof. van Bibber, UC Berkeley
9:00 a.m. Nuclear radiation basics
9:45 a.m. Cloud chamber experiment
10:30 a.m. ABC’s of Radioactivity
11:15 a.m. Energy and the Environment research lecture
12:00 p.m. Lunch (provided at the facility)
1:15 p.m. Tour at Berkeley National Laboratory or UCB Nuclear Engineering Department Materials Science Labs
2:30 p.m. Geiger counter experiment and use
3:30 p.m. A lecture on current topics in the nuclear industry, health physics or nuclear engineering.
4:45 p.m. Evaluation and Conclusion

Registration

The workshop registration is free, but as spaces are limited, it is important to RSVP as soon as possible.  Lunch will be provided as part of the workshop.  We are asking school administrators to consider this workshop an in-service professional development activity.

To enroll, send an email to harmon@berkeley.edu, or complete the registration form and mail it to

Sara Harmon
Nuclear Engineering Department
4155 Etcheverry Hall, MC 1730
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-1730

Please respond early; registrations will be taken on a first come-first served basis and space is limited to 25 participants.  Once you have registered, we will provide you with more information, including directions to the facility.  If you have any questions regarding directions or registration, or any technical questions regarding the workshop, you can email or call Sara Harmon atharmon@berkeley.edu or at 510-642-4077.

Physics teacher, Eric Wright will show you how to bring engineering and solar technology into your curriculum by having your students design and build solar cars. Teachers will get one solar car kits.

( High School students will be encouraged to design and build race cars to compete in the SMUD sponsored Solar Car Race to be held later at American River College on May 3, 2013. ) This is optional. If you plan on racing this year, please give me a call or email me so that I can order kits for you.

Click here to register.

A New Quantum Era

Join secondary school science teachers from across the US for a stimulating full-day conference.

For more information visit www.kitp.ucsb.edu.

Registration deadline: January 18

The Mary Rose, built in 1511, was the flagship of King Henry VIII. She sank in 1545 while en route to confront the French fleet in battle. The ship lay undersea for 440 years before being raised in 1985. The restored Mary Rose is being constantly treated to preserve the wood structure, but in 2002 a new problem arose that began rapidly destroying the ship. Studies of the relevant sulphur chemistry using X-rays from SLAC’s SSRL synchrotron diagnosed the problem and suggested methods for its solution. One of these, tested by experiments at SSRL, involves specially made nanoparticles that attack the causes of the acid production. This lecture will present the amazing story of archeology, chemistry, and physics that preserve this precious artifact and gives us a glimpse back into Tudor times.

About the Speaker: Ritimukta Sarangi is a staff scientist in the Structural Molecular Biology group at SSRL, a subdivision of SLAC. She has an undergraduate degree in Chemistry from St Xavier college in Kolkata, India, an MS in Chemistry from IIT Kanpur in India and a PhD in Chemistry from Stanford University. Her expertise is in hard X-ray spectroscopy. Her research focuses on understanding the geometric and electronic structure of metal sites in proteins. She is also deeply interested in applying X-ray spectroscopy to understand chemical processes involving sulphur compounds in biological and other complex materials.

For more information, contact: Farah Rahbar at Farah.Rahbar@slac.stanford.edu or call 650-926-8537.  You can also visit their website.

In 1962 the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (now the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory) began with the Congressional authorization of its two-mile long linear accelerator, the first $100 million science project. The science mission was the study of the interaction of high-energy electron with matter, a study that had brought Robert Hofstadter his 1961 Nobel Prize for his work at the much smaller linear accelerator at the Hanson lab on the main Stanford Campus. The first beam was delivered in 1966, a remarkably short construction time for such a large project. The era of what is called High Energy Physics had begun at Stanford.

A combination of advances in accelerators, detectors, and scientific breadth has kept SLAC at the frontier of science ever since, though the areas of research have changed greatly now including chemistry, materials, biology, cosmology, and many other sciences as well as the original high energy physics. Four Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work at SLAC and today it is generally regarded as the world’s leading laboratory for photon science because of it X-ray laser. Professor Richter will discuss both the science and technology evolution that made all this possible.  Panofsky Auditorium.

For more information, email farah.rahbar@SLAC.Stanford.edu

RSVP to stanfordhist@stanford.edu or 650.725.3332

http://m.stanford.edu/events/e/?i=30725

Computer animation in feature-films is a modern-day nexus of art and science. Professor Alejandro Garcia developed and teaches Physics of Animation, a science course for visual artists. During 2011, he took a professional leave and worked in Dreamworks Animation’s department of Artistic Development as a physics consultant on Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted. His talk will describe the animation industry from both the scientific and artistic perspectives. For more information, contact elisabeth.thomas@sjsu.edu or call 408-808-2193.

http://library.sjsu.edu/events/physics-animation-presentation-professor-alejandro-garcia-university-scholar-series-note-chan

Our theoretical understanding of the sub-atomic world would not be complete without the Higgs particle. Sometimes called “The God Particle”, this very special particle generates the differences between the fundamental particles and it gives them mass, but until shortly it went undetected. Of course, in science we use different words. In this lecture it is explained what this mysterious object really is and why it is needed in our theories, even if it has little to do with God. Using the most powerful particle accelerator in the world, the LHC, physicists for the first time have the tools to produce and observe this particle in detail. Is it as it was predicted? Are there whole families of Higgs particles?

Speaker: Gerardus ‘t Hooft, Professor of Theoretical Physics, Utrecht University

For more information on the OPPENHEIMER LECTURE, contact Sarah Wittmer, Communications Specialist, Physics Department, UC Berkeley at switt@berkeley.edu or call 510-642-3034.

http://physics.berkeley.edu/index.php?option=com_dept_management&act=events&Itemid=443&task=view&id=1317

6:45pm-7:00pm: Socializing/networking.

7:00-7:25pm: Indre Viskontas, “Music that Moves: The Art and Neuroscience of Effective Performance”

We are constantly bombarded by a cacophony of sounds and yet music still has the power to influence us, often outside our awareness. We will explore how music engages the brain and why it continues to be a worldwide addiction.

7:25-7:50pm: Rebecca Kamen (Northern Virginia Community College), “Making the Invisible, Visible: Discoveries Between Art and Science”

Discoveries between art and science were revealed during research residencies at the American Philosophical Society and the Chemical Heritage Foundation libraries and collections. We will discuss the notion of scientist as artist and artist as scientist, highlighting historic images from these library collections. The main focus will be the genesis of a large sculpture/sound installation, Divining Nature: An Elemental Garden and the different research areas that have informed its development.

7:50pm-8:10pm: BREAK  Before or after the break, anyone in the audience currently working within the intersections of art and science will have 30 seconds to share their work.

8:10-8:35pm Shamit Kachru (Stanford Physics Dept) on “Are There More Dimensions of Space?”

Some leading approaches to theoretical physics (for example, the so called String Theory) suggest that there may be extra dimensions of space, “compactified” to such small size that we have not yet detected them with modern experiments (or our eyes!).

8:35pm-9:00pm: Scott Kildall (Artist) on “Tweets in Space”

Tweets in Space is a new art project by Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern, where we will beam Twitter messages from participants worldwide to Gliese 581d – an exoplanet 20 light years away that can support extraterrestrial life.

http://www.leonardo.info/isast/events.html#LASER-Mar12

Explore “magical” chemical potions, the wonders of dry ice, and the dynamics of air pressure. Some of the topics the mad scientists will investigate include: the three states of matter, a gassy taste test and a super spectacular bubbling potion.

For more information: http://www.sjpl.org/event/fire-and-ice-mad-science.

Where particle physics and cosmology meet, and the implications regarding the nature of the universe.
Speaker: Professor Yasunori Nomura, UC Berkeley.

http://mdas.net/mdas_nsn_pages/mdas_nightsky_eventcalendar.htm

A Teacher Workshop for High School Science Educators

This workshop will focus on using cloud chambers and Geiger counters to help teach the principles of radioactivity and radiation. Participants will receive a wealth of materials – a cloud chamber kit and Geiger counter, workbooks, and classroom activities. This workshop will include a tour to the Advanced Light Source or Cyclotron and lectures by leading scientists. The educational material is targeted for high school science teachers, grades 9-12.

For a review of the workshop and more information, including registration information, visit: http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/news/HTW

Please respond early; registrations will be taken on a first come-first served basis and space is limited to 25 participants.  Once you have registered, we will provide you with more information, including directions to the facility.

Preliminary Topics
What is radiation?
How is it measured?
Where does it come from?
What experiments can you do in your school?

Sponsors: The American Nuclear Society (ANS) and the Northern California Chapter of the
Health Physics Society are proud to sponsor this workshop. Scientists and engineers from the
Northern California Section of both professional societies (ANS-NCS and NCCHPS) are
presenting the material. The UC Berkeley, Nuclear Engineering Department, is generously
providing facilities for the event.

Funding for the workshop is provided in part by the Northern California Section of the
American Nuclear Society, in part by the Northern California Chapter of the Health Physics
Society, and through individual and organizational contributions to the American Nuclear
Society (ANS).

The 2012 California Science Education Conference will be held at the San Jose Convention Center, October 19-21. Teachers attending the conference will have access to over 200 California standards-based workshops, stimulating focus speaker presentations, two general sessions, and access to the exhibit hall. CSTA will feature presentations on the Next Generation Science Standards, be sure to attend this year’s conference and get up-to-date on this quickly developing process.

If you are interested in presenting a workshop at the conference, CSTA is accepting proposals through March 6, 2012. Current members of CSTA who present a workshop have their registration fees waived. For more information visit www.cascience.org/csta/conf_home.asp.

Registration will open in June!