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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:
Our outreach team taught an extracurricular class on the physics of light for high school students through the School for Scientific Thought program through CSEP at CNSi. The class met weekly for five weeks, with a different topic and demonstration for each lesson. We have developed hands-on activities and lessons which we provide freely for you to adapt and reuse! Lesson 1: Introduction
Lesson 2: Optical WaveguidesIn week two, Kareem Hamdy and Victoria Rosborough designed a course to introduce students to the principles of optical waveguiding that enable today's worldwide high-speed communications networks. We teach students about the index of refraction, so that students can measure the index of refraction of a transparent material in a hands-on experiment. In one set of course material, we provide a more intuitive introduction. In the other, we provide a more mathematical explanation of this phenomenon. Lesson 3: LEDs and LasersIn week three, Eric Stanton, Philip Chan and Kareem Hamdy designed a lesson to introduce LEDs and Lasers, and discuss their physical mechanisms. In this week's activity, students perform a skit as electrons and photons to demonstrate the physics of stimulated emission! See the lesson slides for more details. Lesson 4: Electromagnetic Spectrum and Solar EnergyIn week four, Takako Hirokawa, Warren Jin, and Eric Stanton used diffraction gratings to explore the electromagnetic spectra of everyday light sources. After an activity on wave interference to explain how diffraction gratings work, students use the gratings to observe different types of lightbulbs, and run a solar energy experiment to see which light sources can produce the most usable energy.
Lesson 5: Nanofabrication and Photonics Research Opportunities In week five, we gave the class tours of the UCSB Nanofabrication Facility, and integrated photonic research labs. In the in-class portion of day five, we introduced the class to microfabrication, and an example LED fabrication process. SST was made possible by Wendy Ibsen at the Center for Science and Engineering Partnerships and AIM-Photonics.
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Outreach TeamThese activities were developed by the PhoSoc at UCSB's Outreach Team, or individuals who are part of the team. Archives
February 2020
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