LAPTAG-A Physics Outreach Program at UCLA

Physics – Condensed Matter

Scientific paper

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

Scientific paper

LAPTAG was founded in 1993 during a meeting sponsored by the APS, which encouraged high schools and Universities to form alliances. There are currently about twenty high schools, several community colleges and two Universities (UCLA and USC) involved. At first LAPTAG organized tours of laboratories at UCLA, USC, JPL, General Atomics and the Mt. Wilson Observatory and had meetings in which issues on curricula were discussed. It became obvious after awhile that in order for the group to last that projects were necessary. An early project involved having the high school faculty and students create Websites for most of the schools. This was before most the schools could afford Internet connections and Web authoring tools did not exist. Then with funding from the UC Office of the President, a seismology project was initiated and ten schools received seismometers. There were lectures by geologists and staff members of the Southern California Earthquake center; results were reported on the Web. In the spring of 1999 LAPTAG gave seven posters at the Condensed Matter APS meeting in Los Angeles. A web based astronomy course was created and high school students controlled the Mount Wilson telescope remotely and studied a variable star. Our latest project, funded by the Department of Energy resulted in the construction of a plasma lab dedicated to LAPTAG. The lab has equipment that is used by practicing plasma physicists (tone-burst generators, digital scopes, digital data acquisition and computerized probe drives) as well as software (LabView, PVwave). The high school students and teachers built the machine and all the associated diagnostics. Examples of the experiments will be given, however it is not a cookbook lab. As new experiments are introduced the same difficulties we all face must be overcome; the students take part in this. In the November 2001 APS-DPP meeting in Long Beach, CA the high school students presented five posters on the plasma device and wave experiments. The LAPD laboratory is now a National User Facility and LAPTAG is a key component of its outreach program.

No associations

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for scientists and scientific papers. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

LAPTAG-A Physics Outreach Program at UCLA does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with LAPTAG-A Physics Outreach Program at UCLA, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and LAPTAG-A Physics Outreach Program at UCLA will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-920177

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.