|
Victoria Rosborough & Takako Hirokawa (PhoSoc President & Secretary) hosted a hands-on Laser Communications workshop at WISE's I ❤️STEM weekend on October 28th. The event was specifically for high-school women, and features numerous science and technology workshops and demos. We re-used our LaserCom activity for the workshop, which you can find here (lesson 1).
Continuing on the success of 2016's Women In Photonics Week, the PhoSoc Outreach team pulled together women scientists from academia and industry to showcase their love for the science of light! See the full week-long schedule of events we hosted at the event web page: Women In Photonics Week 2017 To kick off the 2017-2018 school year at UCSB, the PhoSoc Outreach team developed an idea that Wendy Ibsen at CSEP had: to have 8th grader's families make Peppergrams and use their smartphones to see a 3D projection seemingly floating in space! The effect is based on "pepper's ghost", an old carnival trick that projects a reflection off of a transparent glass, making it look like something is floating in mid-air in front of you. You can find the full activity writeups on this page. The PhoSoc's "Color Mixing" activity was extended to an hour-long activity for the Teen Center at the local Girls Inc.
We borrowed the red-blocking laser safety glasses from the Light-Pipes activity, and used it to simulate "color blindness" - ie. what happens when you are missing a red cone? (Answer - no red objects don't become invisible, but colors that were previously obviously different become nearly indistinguishable!) Invited by the Lauren Mecum at the IEEE Photonics Society, the PhoSoc Outreach team hosted an "Educational Outreach Table" at the Optical Fiber Communications (OFC) conference in March 2017. The table featured the "Light-Pipes: Controlling Light" & "Color Mixing" activities from our after-school science activities, and the LaserCom activity from our high-school SST classes. Being held at a prominent area right at the registration area, we received a lot of interest from professors and professionals who routinely take science outreach activities to classrooms around the world. In Spring 2017, the PhoSoc @ UCSB deployed a new after-school science night activity through Wendy Ibsen's FUSE program, which went to 5 local schools during their family science nights. The activity explores how a printer uses only 4 colors to print every color humans can see, and why these strange colors like "Cyan" and "Magenta"! See the After-School Science page for the activity handouts. On the first week of October, the PhoSoc at UCSB organized a whole week of activities promoting women that work in the science of light. Organized by Outreach Chairman Demis D. John, the week allowed women scientists at the university to visit schools and talk about their research, invited the public to two women-led tours of local photonics companies/facilities and took one of our science outreach activities to the local Girls Inc. STEM classes.
See more info here: Women in Photonics Week 2016 In September 2016, Eric Stanton put together weekly light-based classes aimed at highschoolers in the SST program, led by Wendy Ibsen at CSEP.
Photos to be posted soon. In Spring 2016, Wendy Ibsen of CSEP deployed a new PhoSoc-Designed activity to family science nights at local middle schools. As part of the FUSE family science-nights, UCSB grad. students led 8th grader's families through fiber optics and how they are used to transmit all our internet, television and telephone data. The activity culminates in a challenge in which the families have to make a "Jell-o Waveguide" that bends the light back 180°, tested with a red laser pointer and paper safety glasses! See the full activity writeup here, authored by Demis D. John and Marilyn Garza, with much help from Wendy Ibsen:
|
Outreach TeamThese activities were developed by the PhoSoc at UCSB's Outreach Team, or individuals who are part of the team. Archives
February 2020
Categories |
||||||
RSS Feed
