Outreach Activities

"Light & Matter" Science Tours for minority high school students

Purpose of the project: High school students find themselves on a crossroad when making a decision that will determine their future. Unfortunately, many of the Hispanic minority students take jobs that do not require much of additional education and training (i.e., in McDonalds) and not so many of them decide to relate their future with Science and Engineering. In Colorado, the shortage of Hispanic minority students in sciences is even more pronounced, because many motivated minority students leave to Universities on the East and West Coasts that are making strong efforts to attract these students. We are giving the minority high school students a Tour to the scientific centers of University of Colorado (with the primary focus on the Liquid Crystal Materials Research Center) aimed to make the students interested in CU, Science, and Engineering. Historically, our region has always been very strong in optics, photonics, and materials physics (three recent Nobel Prizes of University of Colorado and many other prestigious awards are in these fields). We hope that the tour will help us to attract the most talented Hispanic Minority students to optical and materials Science and Engineering

Intended impact, outcomes, & measures: The Tours are organized by the CU SPIE student Chapter (advisor and student members). CU graduate and undergraduate students will share their excitement from doing research, show the state-of-the-art research facilities of the University, do introduction to modern directions in Science and Technology, and also tell about famous Scientists, Inventors, and Entrepreneurs that comprise the proud heritage of our Colorado Region. Partial list of demonstrations includes:

• "Magic Window Tour" through the state of the art research facilities of the Liquid Crystal Materials Research Center
• 3D immersion into the world of liquid crystal molecules
• Basic optics demonstration using kits designed on our own and provided by SPIE
• Introduction to liquid crystals, structures, and textures (with lots of beautiful pictures)
• Tutorial on how to make a Liquid Crystal Display and a tour through the facilities
• A lecture on how liquid crystal can be used in electronic and photonic devices. This will include electronic holography, free space laser communication, skin cancer & virus detection, etc.
• Introduction to diffraction gratings and interferometric lithography
• Introduction to lasers, waveguides, photodiodes, integrated circuits, & photonic crystals
• Cooling atoms with light
• CU optics and materials science greatest discoveries
• Photonics of nanoparticles and nanostructured materials
• Holography demo - how is "everything" recorded
• Laser as a probe for the atmosphere and laser remote sensing
• Laser tweezers and manipulation of small particles and biological species
• Optical Properties of the Atmosphere: Blue Skies and Red Sunsets
• Thin Film sculpturing with lasers

The most important part of this activity is that the Tours are conducted not only by the professor but also by SPIE/CU students only slightly older than the high school students, some of whom (including the president Gardner) are Hispanic Minority students too. This gives us the hope that the students will find the common language and the excitement about Science and Engineering will flow from the students-members of the CU SPIE Chapter to the high school students with no barriers. The main emphasis will be put on the Introduction of the students to the Optical Science and Engineering. In this activity, we will use optics kits provided by the SPIE, and also the kits that we built on our own. We will also show the students documentary movies, tutorials, and, most importantly, give them hand-on experience when doing some simple experiments

Relevance to the campus diversity goals: This activity will help us to increase enrolment of motivated Hispanic minority students in the Science and Engineering Departments. “Light & Matter” Science Tours will make the students interested in Science and Engineering & aware of CU scientific accomplishments. This will help them to become the next generation professionals. Many Science/engineering departments will benefit by attracting motivated minority students