Education and Public Outreach at the Soudan Underground Lab

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With this award funds are provided for partial support of 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. The proposed work is for two high school science teachers and two undergraduate interns to work in the lab over the summer, and an outreach coordinator who will contribute year round. Their primary duty is to help give the twice-daily "physics tours" and explain the lab and the science to visitors of the park. They then use this experience and their science education skills to improve the lab's outreach program and develop lesson plans and educational materials for use by the many school groups which visit the lab on field trips during the school year. They also participate in research projects with the experiments in the lab including MINOS and CDMS. The funds will also support the annual Open House. Most years since 1989, the lab has been open, free to the community at large for a day in the spring. Special displays are set up and hundreds of visitors are shown around the lab by the participating scientists. This gives the lab a high, positive profile in the community as well as share the science. The posters and educational materials developed are available on the website and used throughout the year.