K-12 Education
Walden School All Girls Science Camp
I designed a lab on infrared (IR) radiation for an all girls summer camp that was visiting Caltech and JPL to meet women scientist and explore the labs!
We talked about the early universe and how we study it and then got a lab tour and explored “invisible” light with and ir camera. The purpose of the lab was to understand the importance of using different wavelengths of light to understand the world around us here on earth and in the rest of the universe. We used a camera sensitive to infrared light to look at different objects in the lab. We also discussed how astronomers use cameras and sensors sensitive to these different wavelengths of light on telescopes to explore our universe.
If you want to see the lab write up or borrow it for a lab at your university or school you can download it here.
The girls really enjoyed freezing objects with liquid nitrogen and then seeing what temperature they measured when looking at the objects with the camera.
They also made predictions about what they would see with the camera when looking at different objects like light bulbs. They also tested which materials were opaque or transparent to infrared wavelengths of light.
High School Classroom Visits
Two years ago I joined a student and postdoc who have been visiting Gabrielino High School physics classes for years! we come to the school about once or twice a month and either talk about careers in science, give a lecture, or help with a lab. the students are totally awesome! I love the questions we get.
Last time I went my task was to talk about energy. That seemed like a pretty broad topic to work with so I decided to talk about nuclear energy in stars! I made a prezi talking about small stars versus big stars and their lives and deaths and how they make elements. There were tons of awesome questions about this topic and we talked for the entire hour.
I also have visited Blair High School in Pasadena and will be returning there in February 2018 to talk about research in Antarctica.
Expanding Your Horizons
In 2013, I participated in the Expanding Your Horizons (EYH) conference with 4 other graduate student and postdoc women from the University of Chicago.
The purpose of EYH is to introduce middle school girls to science and to female scientists. We called our work shop Cosmic Adventure and created three different labs for the workshop; one on the expansion of the universe, one on exoplanets, and one on the electromagnetic spectrum. The picture on the right shows the girls reporting back to the whole group on what they learned in their labs.
The Space Visualization Laboratory at Adler Planetarium
In graduate school I was lucky enough to be in the same city as the wonderful Adler Planetarium. While I lived in Chicago, I volunteered about once a month in the Space Visualization Lab at Adler Planetarium.
The Space Visualization Lab (SVL) is a wonderful resource for scientist and the public to interact and talk about current research in astronomy and astrophysics. The SVL at Adler had many high tech projectors including a 3D projector to show the exciting stuff astronomers study.
I also did a video podcast in 2010 with an Adler staff member about our “extreme science.” You can watch that interview here: adlermix