Education

 Integrating sustainability into the curriculum
The REER Laboratory offers students quality hands-on experience that brings their classroom learning to research projects. For the PHYS 5920 course, Research Project-Based Advanced Laboratory, a year-long research project will follow the guidelines of the National Student Design Competition for Sustainability Focusing on People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3), which is organized and funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The students will develop, write up, and present their research proposals during the fall semester and conduct scientific projects/engineer design and present results during the spring semester. 

• In the 2016-17 school year, our Hamline student team proposed “Snow Removal for Northern Solar Panel Operation” and received the EPA P3 award of $15,000.

• In the 2019-20 school year, our Hamline student team proposed "Increased Sensitivity for Lead Detection in Drinking Water Using Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS)" and received the EPA P3 award of $24,518.

• In the 2021-22 school year, our Hamline student team proposed "Enhanced Detection of Lead Ions in Drinking Water Using Bismuth Nanoparticles" and received the EPA P3 award of $24,975.

Sharing energy and environmental sciences and technologies with local community
The REER Laboratory brings energy and environmental science and technologies to local K-12 schools. Recently, Hamline physics students proposed “Renewable Energy in Units Anyone Can Understand” and received the Marsh W. White award from the national Society of Physics Students. The goal of the proposed project is to develop youth understanding of the current efficiency of renewable energy and how much better it can be, which is motivated by the importance of innovations in the fields, as well as the necessity of getting young students to think about sustainability.