Research Experience for Teachers

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 2003.

David Brown (Prior Lake High School) I have had the distinct pleasure to work with Dr. Jim Kakalios during my summer research program at the University of Minnesota. During the six weeks that I worked in Dr. Kakalios' lab, I was involved in a variety of activities. Dr. kakalios' work centers around amorphous silicon and its properties as a semiconductor. So, my work was gathering data that would help Dr. Kakalios in this endeavor.

In order to do this work on the sample of amorphous silicon, I would need to use two devices-a cryochamber and a cryopump. The cryochamber housed the sample of silicon that I would test and they cryopump would create a vacuum in the chamber by immersing it in liquid nitrogen. Since liquid nitrogen exists at 77K (-196 C) the gases in the pump would contract thereby creating a vacuum. This would create a negative pressure in the pump and the gases in the chamber would be drawn into the pump. The cycle would continue until most particles were "pumped" out.

Now, with a cacuum created, I could work with various samples of amorphous silicon. My work included annealing samples of silicon, measuring conductivity vs. voltage and conductivity vs. temperature. All of these tests on the amorphous silicon were run in various conditions that icluded higher temperatures (150 C), lighted chambers, darkened chambers, samples soaked in light and various levels of vacuum. After collected the needed data, I could graph the results and calculate the other meaningful pieces of information.

Needless to say, my time in the program was very engaging and useful. Plus, working with Dr. kakalios was extremely positive. His down to earth approach was both encouraging and pleasant. This was a positive experience that has provided pieces for me to use in my classes as a teacher.

Roxanne Kuerschner, Waconia High School
The research that I worked on was in the field of infrared astronomy and the source of my data was the Spitzer Space Telescope (SST), the last of the Great Telescopes that NASA put into space. This is cutting edge technology as the SST had only collected this particular data a few months ago. The region of the sky that I worked with was the HII region N160 in the Large Magellanic Cloud. I collected data on energy sources in the region, analyzed the data and compared it to results previously determined to check the accuracy. I was able to utilize different data handling programs that "real astronomers" use, namely Mira Pro and SigmaPlot. The final product was that I compared the results to that of other astronomers pre-Spitzer, I tried to locate the point source (main energy source) in N160, and then the region was analyzed to see if the stars were only background stars or if they were part of the system.

I don't think that I have ever learned so much in such a short amount of time before. I will definitely be able to use this experience in not only my astronomy classes, but also my math classes, as I used an awful lot of math to analyze the data: linear regression, slope error, unit conversions, dimensional analysis, histograms and bar graphs.