Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Science and Technology (EUV)

ERC Shows High School Students a Thing Or Two About Optics

Companies can't find enough engineering graduates to fill the jobs they have available, and one of NSF's goals is to fill the pipeline with future engineering practitioners and researchers. With that in mind, Colorado State University's ERC for Extreme Ultraviolet Science and Technology invited high school students to campus for a two-week workshop designed to get them excited about optics and lasers and foster their interest in engineering or science as a profession.

Electrical engineering graduate student Eric Hammersten, undergrad Courtney Brewer, researcher Georgiy Vaschenko and faculty adviser Carmen Menoni developed hands-on experiments for the program that culminated in a pizza party and tour of the ERC's laser labs. The team crafted four experiments dealing with basic optics that would challenge students in their sophomore and junior year of high school. Each case involved measurements and calculations, and one even touched on optical communication.

Twice a week for two weeks, a diverse group of 32 students, including some young women and Hispanics, met at the Undergraduate Optics Laboratory located at the ERC's headquarters. They were all Physics I or II students at Poudre High School in Fort Collins, Colorado. In exit questionnaires, participants said that they would recommend the workshop to their friends "in a heartbeat!" and that, "Yes, this was actually a lot of fun!"

To learn more about this topic:
Visit the Center for Extreme Ultravioled Science and Technology web page at http://euverc.colostate.edu/. Scroll down to Education and Outreach.

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Students in action—setting up experiments and
measuring the results.

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Last modified: January 31, 2005