1. Staff, faculty, and graduate students from various departments in Notre Dame's College of Science participated
in Celebrate Science Indiana (CSI) on October 6th, 2012 at the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis, IN.
Approximately 500 of the event's visitors learned about math, physics, and chemistry at the Notre Dame booth,
sponsored by the ND Physics Department.
Members of the JINA team were on hand to guide people through
a hands-on activity to smash marble nuclei and identify the isotope
on the chart of nuclides, learning about radioactive decay in the
process.
Members of the Chem Demo team were on hand to discuss
demonstrations and activities involving nanotechnology. The
balloon model of a carbon nanotube was visible from the entire
pavilion as it grew throughout the day, eventually stretching
nearly the entire length from floor to ceiling.
The QuarkNet team presented various facets of the CMS detector
and the recent discovery announcement related to the Higgs boson.
Interactive event displays of Higgs events were on display, and
participants created and interpreted their own plots using real data
from the CMS experiment. Also on display were components of
the CMS detector partially designed and constructed by high
school teachers and students right here in Indiana.
Riverbend Community Math Center provided number circles for
children to hop around to explore an unusual type of arithmetic.
Children also built colorful bracelets to discover underlying
mathematical patterns. Young children practiced counting and
number recognition. Lower elementary students discovered a
pattern relating to whether the modulus is even or odd. Older
students learned how modular arithmetic relates to remainders in
division. They also discovered a pattern based on the factors of
the numbers involved in the activity.
Participants in Celebrate Science Indiana were Micha
Kilburn, Sarah West, Thomas Loughran, Ken Cecire,
Amanda Serenevy, Kate Rueff, Colin McClelland,
Kasey Clear, Dany Floisand, and Karen Antonio.