2004 Summary of Research and Teaching Development Activities

2004 RET Program

Here are some brief descriptions of the activities (both in initiation to research and in curriculum development) undertaken by high-school physics teachers participating in the RET program in the summer of 2004.

David Brown (Prior Lake High School) worked with Prof. J. Kakalios, constructing (and collecting data with) an apparatus to measure the electrical conductance of amorphous semiconductors under vacuum conditions and over a wide range of temperatures (from 77 to 450 K).

Roxanne Kuerschner (Waconia High School), supervised by Prof. T. J. Jones (Astronomy), worked on the analysis of infrared images from the Spitzer Space Telescope using the Mira Pro 7 astronomical image processing software.

Carl Sandness (Hibbing High School), was in residence at the Soudan Underground Laboratory working as an interpreter guiding the public through daily tours of the MINOS (Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search) and CDMS II (Cryogenic Dark Matter Search) experiments, collecting outreach materials into a useful package given in advance to school tours and developing lesson plans and labs for teachers to introduce high school students to particle physics.

Erik Sivertson (Milaca High School) worked with Prof. J. Eckert (visiting from Harvey Mudd College) to automate the system used to produce the magnetic multilayer thin film structures studied by the research group headed by Prof. Dan Dahlberg. This involved interfacing the system to a PC and developing a software enabling users to simply type in the parameters for each film, allowing for computer control of part of the process and prompting the user for any step not yet automated.