Education and Public Outreach at the Soudan Mine Underground Lab

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PROPOSAL NUMBER: 0758090INSTITUTION: U of Minnesota DuluthNSF PROGRAM: PHY - ELEMENTARY PARTICLE ACCEL USERPRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Habig, Alec T.TITLE: Education and Public Outreach at the Soudan Mine Underground Lab ABSTRACTThis proposal requests funding for the public outreach program at the Soudan Mine Underground Laboratory, the country?s only operational underground high energy particle physics and astrophysics facility. The Lab is hosted in a Minnesota State Park, where each year about 4,000 of the Park?s visitors venture 2,341 feet underground to see the facility, the MINOS and CDMS-II experiments, and to learn about neutrinos and Dark Matter. Support is requested to continue the successful program which has been in place since the MINOS detector was completed in 2003. The Soudan Underground Mine is a historical site operated by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in an old iron mine in Northern Minnesota. Around 28,000 people per year take the ?historical? tour in the park, visiting the workings at the bottom of the ½-mile deep mine. The Laboratory is also on that lowest level of the mine, where experiments benefit from the 10**5 reduction in the cosmic ray background compared to the Earth?s surface. This proposal is centered on the broader impact, but the outreach program described here has a significant impact on, and supports the intellectual merit of, the underlying science program. The coincidence of an established education and outreach program, a top-notch research facility, and an unusual and impressive location provide a great opportunity to bring students and the general public into the lab where they learn about the often esoteric world of particle physics in an intriguing and accessible fashion. They also propose to fund an annual Open House at Vermillion Community College in nearby Ely, MN. This will help give the lab a high and positive profile in the community as well as bring the science to even more people.