Accessible Space Physics: Developing a National High School Magnetometer Array (AFGE)

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

9978314MoldwinThe project offers schools across the country the opportunity to measure and experiment with Earth's natural environment, to contribute data to the nation's space weather program, and to have effective teaching tools to educate young scientists about the space environment. It will develop a relatively inexpensive, robust, sensitive magnetometer in kit form that can be purchased and distributed to schools, assembled by students, then set up and used to take research-quality data. Teachers will be trained in their operation and how to use them in classroom activities that demonstrate "space-weather." The data will be transmitted through the GLOBE Program infrastructure, so that students can compare their local readings with those of students at other sites around the continent and can be used by university and other researchers to study geomagnetic Ultra-Low Frequency (ULF) waves. Low-to mid-latitude magnetic pulsations provide important information about the solar wind-magnetosphere interaction and the dynamic coupling of the magnetosphere and ionosphere. The project will train High School science teachers in the use of induction coil magnetometers, provide the basic space science content needed for the understanding of magnetic pulsation data in space physics research, and develop mentoring relationships between space physicists and local high school science teachers and their students. These relationships will allow the magnetometer data to be fully utilized both scientifically as well as educationally. The planned data-collection interval overlaps with the main data collection phase of ISTP/Solar Max, thus enhancing scientific collaborative opportunities. This project directly impacts graduate, undergraduate, and pre-college education by providing High Schools with real-life space physics instrumentation and undergraduates and graduate student's ULF data for analysis.