Education & Outreach
The National Spherical Torus Experiment-Upgrade (NSTX-U), the flagship fusion facility at PPPL, received a formal dedication from then-U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. The facility has twice the heating power and magnetic field strength of its predecessor. “The vastly expanded capabilities of this spherical tokamak will enable us to explore new physics regimes and tackle the major engineering problems for fusion energy,” Moniz said.
Some 575 seventh- to tenth-grade girls from New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland found fun and inspiration doing myriad hands-on activities and meeting female scientists at PPPL’s 15th annual Young Women’s Conference in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. They talked to investigators from the FBI, watched colorful infrared images of themselves, played with robots, learned about electronics and plasma physics, saw cool chemistry, and heard about careers in STEM.
Fifty seventh- and eighth-graders from John Witherspoon Middle School in Princeton spent a half-day at PPPL becoming scientists. They did a variety of hands-on science activities, from building a motor to sampling ice cream frozen with liquid nitrogen in a cryogenics demonstration, to watching plasma demonstrations of lightning, static electricity and stars. They left wanting more.
Inspiring future leaders of the scientific community is a key goal of the Science Education department at PPPL. Our year-around activities include summer and semester-long Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) programs and summer and semester-long high school internships. The SULI summer program begins with a week-long course in plasma physics and fusion energy that prepares undergraduate students to conduct research, under the guidance of scientists and engineers, in support of PPPL programs. Spring and fall semester-long programs begin directly with research and last about 16 weeks.
