Summer is usually the time when undergraduate student interns flock to PPPL to learn about fusion and plasma physics at a national laboratory. But because of the coronavirus pandemic, the students participated virtually from their homes around the country in 2020.

Attending the virtual session were 47 interns from all over the U.S. and hundreds more tuning in to a virtual introductory course in plasma physics and fusion energy. Most interns were enrolled in the DOE’s Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI), with others in the DOE’s Community College Internship (CCI) program and PPPL’s own Engineering Internship program.

“Given the challenging circumstances, I was incredibly proud of how our students and mentors adapted to remote-only research projects,” said Andrew Zwicker, the head of the PPPL Science Education department that organizes the SULI experience at the Lab. “In addition, the Science Education team put into place the online tools to facilitate interactions and create a genuine sense of community among all.”

For some students, the nature of their research meshed well with the virtual experience. “I didn’t need a lab or lab equipment to do my work,” said Kirstin Koepnick, a student at Bates College majoring in mathematics and physics who studied how knot theory could improve the design of fusion facilities. “I just needed a pen, some paper, and a computer.”

The participants jumped right into the summer experience, which included creating posters for a virtual session at the end of the 10-week program. “I expected some difficulties because the internship was remote, but it turned out to be really great,” said Elena Mitra, an undergraduate at CUNY-Hunter College majoring in physics. “We had group meetings often, and everyone was so responsive and helpful.”

Becoming part of the community seemed to be one of the lasting effects of the summer program. “Because we were immediately invited to PPPL all-hands meetings, had a big kick-off meeting of our own, and had direct contact with the director, I and the other interns felt like we were considered important members of the community,” said John Ball, a physics major at the University of Maryland-College Park. “There was this wonderfully welcome attitude that made you want to take it very seriously.”

More than 100 PPPL parents and children attended the Laboratory’s Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work (at Home) Day to watch plasma experiments and find out about science experiments they can do at home. Science Education senior program leaders Shannon Swilley Greco and Arturo Dominguez led the virtual event with the help of Swilley Greco’s three children, Annika, 2, Ryan, 5, and Lukas, 7, and some enthusiastic virtual participants.

“Under normal circumstances we would love to bring the children into the Lab but since every day is take your children to work day, we decided to bring the Lab to our kids,” Greco said. “I was super excited at how well it worked.”

Swilley Greco showed the audience a plasma ball and Dominguez explained that a plasma is an electrically charged gas and got the audience to give him examples of plasmas in real life such as lightning and neon lights. Son Ryan helped demonstrate the Van de Graaff generator, which creates static electricity that made his hair stand on end. Ryan also held the twisted glass bulb that lit up when Swilley Greco used the Tesla coil.

Swilley Greco then went upstairs from her basement to her kitchen to demonstrate experiments parents can do at home with their children. These included an experiment in which Swilley Greco blew out a candle and then relit it by lighting the smoke. “I can see it and it is cool,” said Greg Tchilinguirian, head of PPPL’s Instrumentation and Control, who attended with his daughter, Gwen. “I am going to try to do it.”

Dominguez demonstrated how you can crush a can (in another experiment requiring adult supervision) by heating the can on the stove in a pan and then inverting it into ice water.

Swilley Greco also demonstrated how parents and children can create cool bubble creations right at their kitchen table or levitate a ping pong ball using a hair dryer.

Some of the children enthusiastically shared their own experiments, with Elizabeth Cai, daughter of engineer Danny Cai, showing how if you put honey on top of dish soap the honey drops to the bottom. This demonstrates something called “density,” she said.

“You make science look fun (which it is),” said staff member Brian Bozarth in the virtual chat room during the presentation. “Thanks Shannon and Arturo,” said Fredy Rabanales, an electro-mechanical technician. “Kids had fun looking at science experiments.” And the best review from one of the children was the question, “Can we see you another day?”

For a list of family home experiments click here, and for the complete PPPL story click here.

Students attending the third annual graduate summer school at PPPL gathered virtually in 2020, due to travel restrictions, to get a broad overview of the field of plasma physics.

The week-long program consisted of three mini-courses of four lectures each streamed live to all 40 participants and then archived for later reference. The courses —“Computational Methods in Plasma Physics,” “Low-Temperature Plasmas,” and “Turbulence” — were taught by PPPL instructors and collaborators. Graduate students at the end of the week gave poster presentations via Zoom on their current areas of interest.

“I think this year’s program went really well,” said Arturo Dominguez, PPPL’s science education senior program leader and founder of the graduate summer school. He noted that changing the program’s format from in-person to virtual had both disadvantages and benefits. “On one hand, we shortened the lectures to half a day, so there was definitely some loss in content,” Dominguez said. “And as with everything else, there’s a loss when everybody is not in the same place and able to have dinner together or interact after hours.”

However, “because the students didn’t have to travel, there was less effort required to attend, which meant that we could accept students from as far away as Peru and the United Kingdom,” Dominguez said. “And we were able to do almost everything we have done in previous years.”

Since the students were accustomed to using Zoom, the summer school’s virtual aspect was not jarring. “By the time they got to us, they were pretty used to the whole online thing,” said Deedee Ortiz, science education program manager at PPPL and one of the graduate school’s organizers. “They were engaged and excited to be part of the program, even though it was virtual.”

The summer school, founded in 2017, aims to provide a broad overview of plasma physics, unlike other summer programs that focus on specific topics in the plasma physics field. The courses are meant for students either just beginning their graduate studies or in the first or second year.

A PPPL computer platform that allows users all over the world to operate a real plasma experiment from their living rooms was among the winners of a global competition selected by an international science panel as a cutting-edge technology.

Development of the platform, led by Arturo Dominguez, a senior program leader in the Science Education Department, won in the category of digital education technology, one of the 10 categories in the competition with 10 winners each. The 100 total winners were chosen from more than 900 nominations of breakthrough technologies from 110 countries.

Dominguez and competitors gave digital presentations as part of the Falling Walls virtual World Science Summit, an annual science event in Berlin that coincides with the anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. You can see the virtual digital education ceremony here.

“We are very excited,” said Dominguez, who noted that the platform is especially useful for students in the U.S. and worldwide who are doing part or all of their learning online during the COVID-19 pandemic. “This year is a particularly good year highlighting this platform because everybody’s trying to find ways to share information and to learn from one another online.”

The remote platform allows users to go online to access the Remote Glow Discharge Experiment (RGDX), which is located in the Science Education Laboratory at PPPL. Users can manipulate controls that change the pressure and voltage of the device to create and manipulate a plasma in a vacuum tube. They can measure the conditions necessary to break down a gas, in this case common air, into a plasma.

The online platform includes educational resources that make the science accessible for students of all ages and backgrounds. It was funded by the DOE’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences.

A dozen undergraduate students spent the afternoon doing experiments aimed at teaching them some fundamentals about electromagnets through the PPPL Undergraduate Workshop in Plasma Physics. But instead of sitting at laboratory tables the students built small homemade batteries and electromagnets in their own living rooms and bedrooms.

The students attending the four-day workshop broke into small groups and proudly displayed to each other how their batteries could light a small LED lightbulb during a session given remotely due to COVID-19.

The workshop is aimed at introducing underrepresented students, including Black, Hispanic, LGBTQ+ and female students in their first or second year of college, to plasma physics. The afternoon gives students an opportunity to network and encourages them to apply for PPPL internships that could lead to careers in plasma physics and fusion sciences.

PPPL’s Science Education team sent students packets with batteries, copper wires, and other equipment for hands-on experiments. They enlisted the help of lab videographer Elle Starkman to provide a video tour of the laboratory in lieu of the usual in-person tour. “We tried hard to make it very interactive,” said Laura Zhang, a PPPL graduate student who co-led the program with Arturo Dominguez, the Science Education senior program leader who organized the class for the fourth year. “It went surprisingly well,” Zhang said.

Shannon Swilley Greco, another Science Education senior program leader, displayed hands-on experiments like the Van de Graaff generator and the Tesla Coil via Zoom. Students learned some basic scientific coding in a computational workshop in which they worked on programs together in breakout rooms led by graduate students Jacob Schwartz, Yichen Fu, and Oak Nelson.

Steve Cowley, PPPL director, who usually finds time to eat lunch with students when the workshop is on-site, dropped in via video chat to talk to the students. And on the final day, several graduates of the program, some of whom had been participants in PPPL’s Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (SULI) program, spoke with the undergraduates about internships and graduate school.