E&O Department bustling

School is out, but not for the Sanford Lab?s Education and Outreach Department.

On June 9, department Deputy Director Peggy Norris introduced 13 teachers to the Physics of Atomic Nuclei (PAN). The one-day workshop included lectures and hands-on activities to familiarize teachers with the evolution of atomic models and to provide them with introductions to nuclear, particle and astrophysics. 

Later in the month, 10 South Dakota teachers who were already familiar with those concepts participated in a week-long ?ePAN? workshop, searching for online resources for introducing modern physics content into classrooms. The teachers developed lesson plans to take back to their classrooms. Examples included ?Atomic Models for Kids? for fifth graders in Rapid City, a unit on radioactive decay for sophomore biology students in the Tripp-Delmont School and a unit on using online cosmic-ray data for physics students in Spearfish. 

Other student groups visiting the Sanford Lab in June included high school geology students from across the country attending the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology geology field camp and Sitting Bull Tribal College?s Academic Academy, a program for high school students from the Standing Rock Reservation.

Education will continue this week, when Norris and her colleagues host up to 60 students from the Spearfish Kids Camp.

Later this month, earth-science teachers from Illinois and students from the Pennington County 4H summer program will visit the Sanford Lab. In addition, the Davis-Bahcall Scholars will be on site July 9 though 19, before traveling to the Gran Sasso and Frascati laboratories in Italy. Then they?ll visit Fermilab, Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago in Illinois. At the University of Chicago they?ll meet Andrew Davis, who is the Director of the Center for Cosmochemistry. Davis also is the son of the late Nobel laureate Ray Davis, for whom the Davis Campus on the 4850 Level is named.