Outreach, Education and Service
R.L. McCarthy – Nov. 20, 2009 Outreach, Education and Service
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The privilege of receiving public funding for our research brings an
obligation to engage with the wider community and explain the
importance of what we do, to provide service to scientific and
governmental bodies, and to expand the opportunities for education in
schools and universities.
Each of us has different capabilities and strengths, so the way we fulfill
this responsibility varies from one person to another.
In this talk, I will group our activities into four general categories
(though substantial overlaps occur):
 Outreach to the public schools
 Creating new educational opportunities at the University
 Public talks of general interest
 Service to the broader scientific community and government
Outreach, Education and Service
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Outreach to the public schools - Quarknet
Quarknet was started with NSF/DOE support in 1999. It sought to bring
cutting edge research experience to high school teachers and to help them
find ways to expand understanding of science in the classroom.
We were Quarknet sponsors in its first year. We identified two master
teachers to serve as liaison to the Long Island physics teachers. We
mentored these master teachers in a summer-long research program at
Fermilab, helping to build detectors.
We organized two 2-week summer workshops in Stony Brook and BNL
for teachers where we outlined current topics in particle physics that
could be used in the classroom, and held working sessions on building
simple detectors for classroom experiments.
Our Quarknet program combined with BNL in 2001, continued through
2003, and largely morphed into MARIACHI.
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Outreach to public schools - Teacher Training
Largely as a result of Quarknet and other programs Bob McCarthy
became the Director of the Physics Education Program at Stony Brook:
 first contact for teachers in the community with the department
 adviser to all students in the physics teaching programs
 answer inquiries from the general public about preparing to teach physics
 requested and obtained approval of Helio Takai (BNL) as an Adjunct Professor of
Physics, to improve the outreach connection of the Physics Education Program. Helio
led Quarknet at BNL and founded the MARIACHI experiment.
 advised MAT students to work on MARIACHI for research credits
 requested and obtained approval of Robert Spira, a high school teacher, as Adjunct
Professor of Physics, to bring real high school teaching expertise into our education
programs.
 requested and obtained approval of a new outreach course: PHY579 “Special Topics
for Teachers”, requested by teachers, to explain new physics to teachers – taught by
Michael Rijssenbeek and Helio Takai, typical enrollment 8/semester.
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Outreach to the public schools - MARIACHI
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Outreach to the public schools - MARIACHI _
Proposed to NSF by Helio Takai, David Bynum (CESAME) and Mike Marx.
The scientific premise is the simultaneous detection of large air showers
using scintillation counters installed in school classrooms and reception of
strong commercial FM radio signals from below the horizon, reflected from
ionization trails left by ultra-high-energy cosmic ray showers in the upper
atmosphere.
Measurements from schools and the
central radio receiver are collected by
connection to the Open Science Grid and
brought to a node at Stony Brook to be
combined and give estimates of cosmic
ray energy and directions.
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Outreach to the public schools - MARIACHI
Stony Brook received funding to set up a center
for education, school field trips, demonstrations,
and detector building and characterization. A
postdoc was hired to oversee these activities,
housed in the decommissioned and renovated SB
van de Graaf/LINAC control room in the NSL
(Nuclear Structure Lab).
The scintillator, HV supplies and light tight gun cases for schools were
designed and built at Stony Brook (Takai, Schamberger, Steffens, Manzella
(EE), and Vavilov) and were made available to teachers/students.
A MARIACHI
scintillator in its gun
case
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Outreach to the public schools - MARIACHI
Students acquire and share data that gives
them a taste of real research.
Example results from
MARIACHI observations
http://www-mariachi.physics.sunysb.edu/wiki/index.php/Ground_Array
NSF funding for MARIACHI has now terminated but we continue to
build new detectors and to add new schools on Long Island, with
prospects for expanding to neighboring states.
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Outreach to public schools – Physics Teaching Lab
Michael Marx and Harry Stuckey (high school teacher)
As part of CESAME (Center for Science and Mathematics Education)
following the very successful outreach of our Department of
Biochemistry, high school classes are brought to the NSL to perform
experiments that require equipment not available in most high
schools: cosmic rays (a la MARIACHI)
e/m of the electron
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Creating new educational opportunities
Teaching is of course the primary obligation for the academic faculty. We
have enhanced these responsibilities through the creation of new techniques
for teaching and development of new courses and programs.
Modernization of Physics for the Life Sciences (class of 600) – Rod Engelmann
 Delivery of course material automated: students download notes and
videos
 Web quizzes for credit automated
 Lectures become workshops with frequent automated quizzes
students answer with RF remotes, get immediate feedback
 No recitations – students get individual email and blog help from
instructors
 Labs and exams are graded automatically
 Received a grant for course redesign from the State University of NY
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Creating new educational opportunities
Physics Education Program – Bob McCarthy
 Introduced a new BS/MAT program – Students can
graduate in a total of 5 years with both a BS and an MAT
degree. (A physics major is required in all programs.)
 Number of graduates in the last 5 academic years:
4, 1, 1, 3, 4
 Numbers are small but one teacher who knows physics
can teach 100 students/year. Currently 6 students in the
program.
 Introduced 6 new courses (5 of which did not require
significant new resources), Robert Spira teaches our
seminar on teaching methods with an enrollment of 10
pre-service and in-service teachers in the spring of 2009
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Creating new educational opportunities
Physics for Poets – Chang Kee Jung
successful new courses for non-science majors
Light, Color and Vision
Physics of Sport (with lab)
summer school lectures on particle physics - Escolo Swieca
for Brazilian students and postdocs
courses for WISE – Michael Rijssenbeek
teach students to use scintillation counters
Hands on Science with Cosmic Rays – Michael Marx
MARIACHI style work with non-physics majors
Probability & Statistics for Experimental Physics – John Hobbs
requested by students
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Creating new educational opportunities
School Plus
Weekend Enrichment program School Plus presents K-12th students with an
alternative refreshing perspective on Math, Physics, Art and Language. The
program seeks to supplement the diet of the basic school curriculum and
thereby enhance the students' performance in the classroom and give them
confidence and desire to explore beyond the normal curriculum. School
Plus operates in New Jersey, Massachusetts, Washington, Manhattan and
Long Island. The Long Island branch was founded by a member of our
department.
Students are introduced to non routine, mind-stimulating problems, which
can't be solved without original insight.
Dmitri Tsybychev teaches physics to 12 -14 year olds
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Creating new educational opportunities
Center for Accelerator Science and Education
CASE
Accelerators, originally invented for subnuclear
research, are expanding as tools for research
and industry in a broad range of fields. There
is a strong need for more accelerator physicists,
but accelerator physics education is restricted
to a very few universities.
ACCELERATOR USE WORLDWIDE
Particle/nuclear
~120
Synchroton light sources
~50
Medical radioisotopes
~200
Radiotherapy
~7500
Biomedical research
~1000
Industrial processing/R&D
>1500
Ion implantation etc.
>7000
TOTAL
~17,500
Stony Brook is relatively unique as a research university, situated close to a
national accelerator laboratory. This led us (Grannis, Marx, with nuclear
colleagues Hemmick, Deshpande) to join with BNL scientists and SBU adjunct
professors (Litvinenko, Ben Zvi, Peggs), to establish CASE in 2008 to develop a
curriculum for training accelerator scientists with courses at Stony Brook and
research opportunities at Brookhaven.
CASE is interdisciplinary – Physics, Applied Math, Bioengineering etc. at SBU
and Collider-Accelerator, NSLS and Physics departments at BNL.
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Creating new educational opportunities
Center for Accelerator Science and Education
A curriculum has been proposed. Instructors would include some new
hires plus faculty from participating SB and BNL departments.
Sample research projects have been identified at BNL: ATF, NSLS, RHIC.
CASE will use the MARIACHI-NSL center in our building for acceleratorbased student experiments such as mass spectrometry, carbon dating,
Rutherford scattering based on the Stony Brook Tandem van de Graaf
accelerator. This facility offers opportunities for undergraduate students
to conduct accelerator-based research projects and to make innovations
in accelerator software and control systems.
CASE has been approved by the University as a Type 1 Center, with codirectors Tom Hemmick (NSF NP support) and adjunct Vladimir
Litvinenko (BNL). We aim for matching support from NSF and DOE to
sustain this educational component of their mission to support
accelerator-based science.
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A Few Key Members of CASE
Michael Marx:
Associate Vice
President for
Brookhaven Affairs
Oversees all SB/BNL
joint centers
Linwood Lee:
Axel Drees:
Founder of SB
SB Assoc. Dean
for Operations Nuclear Structure Lab
Tom Hemmick and Vladimir Litvinenko:
Directors of CASE
Abhay Deshpande:
Ilan Ben-Zvi:
Electron-Ion Collider
Deputy Director
Collaboration
for Research
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Facilities and Resources at BNL
• Research Tools Available:
– Free Electron Lasers, Picosecond Terawatt Lasers, PhotoInjector Lepton Sources, Inverse Compton Gamma Source,
State-of-the-art Diagnostics (e.g. tomographic phase space
measurement)
• Testing Advanced Concepts:
– First tests of IFEL, ICA and double laser accelerator staging,
multi-bunch plasma wakefield, cyclo-resonant acceleration.
• Education:
– Small scale facility offers hands-on experience from state of the
art photo injector, high brightness beam transport, compression
and diagnostics to many different advanced accelerator
concepts.
– In the last dozen years between one and two PhD’s per year
were based on ATF experiments.
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•
Attracting Younger Students
(We need to start young.)
WISE 187 Class:
– Spring 2009: Cockroft-Walton Experiment as part of a
“Physics History” Session.
– Spring 2010: Dedicated Accelerator Science Session
planned (taught by CASE).
•
Accelerator Summer Camp (2009)
– High School and Undergrad Students
– What is a Nucleus?:
Nuclear decay, Accelerator Mass Spectrometry
– How do energetic particles affect matter?:
stopping gamma rays, stopping charged particles, hadronbeam therapy
– How do you accelerate charged particles?
Electric forces for pushing, Magnetic forces for turning,
Magnetic forces for focusing, Types of accelerators: Van
de Graaf, Tandem, Cyclotron, Synchrotron.
– Perform Nuclear Transmutation Experiment!
27Al(p,n)27Si
•
Accelerator Camp -- July2009
HS Students Steering beam:
27Al(p,n)27Si Experiment
USPAS (US Particle Accelerator Schol):
– CASE plans to write and teach a curriculum for
undergraduates and sponsor a Scholarship Program to
attract the best undergrad students to USPAS.
•
Master’s degree program:
– Growth in accelerator applications make a Master’s
Degree program a vital component in our future.
Outreach, Education and Service
Women in Science and Engineering
Undergraduate Student w/ her data
Cockroft-Walton Experiment
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Public talks of general interest
Explaining the excitement of new ideas and techniques in science to the
general public is a challenging, but rewarding activity. We have given
general interest outreach talks in many local and national settings.
“Worlds of Physics” is a monthly evening lecture series that typically draws
~100 attendees. Rijssenbeek, Hobbs, Jung, Grannis, Takai have given
several of these lectures on aspects of particle physics, detectors,
accelerators and science policy.
Other recent public talks:
“Particle Accelerators: Herding and hurrying cats” American Nuclear Society
“Breaking the paradigm of particle physics” SBU Emeritus Association
“Applications of ILC Technology” US House of Representatives reception
“The rise of large collaborations” APS spring meeting plenary talk
“Experiments at Fermilab: Understanding matter at the smallest scale" Evening public lecture
at Fermilab
“International cooperation on large science projects” AAAS meeting on Scientific Freedom
and National Security
"Particle Physics at the Crossroads", Thomas J. Watson IBM Research Center
Outreach, Education and Service
“The Standard Model” APS centenary talk at 4 year colleges
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Service to the broader community
We recognize a responsibility to take service and leadership positions at
the national level to advance our field and science in general. Among
the positions we have held:
 APS Division of Particles and Fields chair
 HEPAP and Long Range Planning subpanels
 DOE Program manager for ILC
 ILC international steering committee, co-chair Americas steering
group, ITRP technology choice panel, GDE director selection, ILC
parameters specification committee, IDAG advisory group to validate
detectors for TDR
 Fermilab URA Board of Overseers
 SLAC Scientific Policy Committee chair
 Funding Agencies for Large Colliders – Resource Group, principal
author of “Technological Benefits Deriving from the ILC”
 APS review of Rev. Modern Physics; PRD editorial board
 Many Lab and universityOutreach,
visitingEducation
committees
and Service
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