Physics Outreach

MasterclassTelecon, originally uploaded by NDeRC2.

Dan Karmgard, three high school students and I participated in a Masterclass in Particle Physics telecon with teachers from the Cincinnati QuarkNet Center and an Atlas physicist from CERN. We used EVO software to support the conversation.

Here’s a screencast of what the telecon looked like. (This is just a moment from the closing comments.)

0612091046.jpg, originally uploaded by NDeRC2.

Here’s another dedicated set of student research associates at the Notre Dame QuarkNet Center in June 2009.

0610091458.jpg, originally uploaded by NDeRC2.

Three QuarkNet REHS research associates enjoying a demonstration.

downsized_0609091107.jpg, originally uploaded by NDeRC2.

Here’s a picture of Laura Ficker via Flickr. (I’ve always wanted to say that:) On behalf of one:ten communications, Laura is introducing NDeRC blogging to the new cohort of NDeRC Fellows. Using a cell phone, you can upload an image to Flickr, edit it in Picnik, and post it from Flickr to this wordpress blog, all in well under 5 minutes. I’ll post a screencast here (shortly:) to show how each of these steps work. The point here is that you can blog pretty real time.

All that was written from Flickr, which is a good way to blog if you want to introduce some simple content. The wordpress blog has more powerful editing tools, which you can use after posting from Flickr (to add hyperlinks, for example.)

Blogging involves living life more in public, aware that your experiences are valuable to and often should be shared with others. But living with others is a conversation, rather than a monologue. So blogging and reading the blogs of others are complementary practices. Collaboration literacy in the current age involves doing both. To follow other people’s blogs, you can subscribe to them via email or rss notifications. (Here’s a link to a screencast introducing notifications.) Some of what you read you might want to read real time: there are a number of services (like dial2do) through which you can get sms (text) notifications of new posts to blogs you like. So take advantage of these expanded capabilities for sharing life, real time: blog, and read.

2009-06-03_1340, originally uploaded by NDeRC2.

This is a Nexus map of my facebook friends constellation. (You can generate one of these for your own friends network yourself by clicking this link while logged in to your facebook account.) This sort of social networking visualization tool has been around for a while. (Here’s a review of some of it.) Our hope is to use such software to visualize the growth of Integrated STEM community. For now, we might try creating facebook groups and mapping growth that way. Stay tuned:)

0512091417.jpg, originally uploaded by NDeRC2.

Today I met with 3 NDeRC astronomy Fellows!

2009-05-06_1656, originally uploaded by NDeRC2.

From International Grid This Week. Notice what’s happening with computing, and what happened with electricity. There seems to be a poverty barrier, stopping progress for a larger percentage of households as the cost of the technology increases. (Here’s another US curve, more detailed and harder to read.) It would be interesting to see a similar graph for worldwide households and country-by-country. Every plateau in these adoption curves marks a technological divide, which we know best today as a digital divide. Some of these divides might be more complex than simple economics–automobile ownership can be lower where mass transit is available, for example. But the plateau associated with computing adoption doesn’t seem complex in that way: those who can afford it, have it. Computing is a catalyst for other sorts of progress. We ought to resist the flattening of that adoption curve in our own community. Here’s how it is being resisted in Northern Uganda. We should resist it in Michiana, too.

0429091923.jpg, originally uploaded by NDeRC2.

Greg Crawford, Dean of Notre Dame’s College of Science, led a discussion on Nanohealth at the inaugural Science Cafe: a monthly cultural event held at “Notre Dame Downtown” on Michigan Avenue. The Science Cafe could and should become an important element of revitalizing STEM community and culture in Michiana. Thanks to Notre Dame graduate student and Schmitt Fellow Mia Stephen and others for organizing this event! See a schedule of upcoming events here.

Next Steps 2009, originally uploaded by NDeRC2.

Just got to blog this: a four-day old zebrafish, captured by cell phone held up to the eyepiece of a low-powered microscope. Imaging is amazing.

http://erc.nd.edu/blogs/tloughran/files/2009/04/loughranforumiiflickr.jpg