Nuclear Physics Outreach Programme

This proposed programme primarily aims to increase the overall knowledge and understanding of nuclear physics within local communities in an interactive and novel way, portraying nuclear physics as an active and exciting field of scientific research. Specifically, the aim is to enhance levels of understanding regarding experimental techniques such as fixed target scattering experiments and the concept of particle kinematics, as well as fundamental concepts in nuclear physics like the nuclide chart, nuclear fusion/fission reactions and the binding energy of nuclei. The aim is also to raise the important awareness of crucial applications relying on nuclear physics which are useful and relevant to every day life, for example nuclear medicine, or meeting future energy demands through the realisation of novel fusion technology.

Our proposed programme is extremely timely, as we plan to take advantage of an upcoming large scale international platform around which to coordinate our activities. We expect this to kick-start future development and continuation of our activities. The International Nuclear Physics Conference (INPC) series is the largest international conference devoted to fundamental nuclear physics research. The 2019 instance (INPC2019) will be held, in the end of July 2019, at the Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow. The Nuclear and Hadron Physics (NHP) Research Group of the University of Glasgow (UoG) led the successful bid to bring INPC2019 to Glasgow and are chairing the organisation of the conference. The direct objective of this proposal is to organise a series of nuclear physics outreach events which will form a large scale public engagement component of the INPC2019.

The goal is to educate as many members of the general public and local communities as possible, but school pupils and school teachers will be targeted, including schools from disadvantaged areas. Scientific peers and science communicators (STEM ambassadors) will also be included and invited to take part. The objective of this is to generate future opportunities for the resources we will develop to be re-used and disseminated widely and successfully within the STEM community.

The objectives are to develop materials for and host a series of nuclear physics themed events. This will include teacher training, a masterclass, a workshop, and a novel temporary pop-up exhibition. The exhibition will be re-usable for science museums/events and will be centred around the focal point of an eye-catching 3D, 8m long, complete model of the nuclide chart, constructed from LEGO. This chart was developed by the University of York (UoY) Binding Blocks (BB) team. To establish the programme beyond our events, we aim to provide classroom activity resources for teachers.

We anticipate the main impact generated by our programme to be knowledge exchange, having strong educational value. This would occur directly at our events and beyond, within classrooms. The educational content of the programme is designed to be universally accessible, however, to a certain extent it has been aligned with current school curricula and the STFC "Inside the Atom - connections to the curriculum" resources material. The programme will therefore create its highest levels of impact within schools and the educational community.

Having visited and engaged with our events and exhibition, participants are expected to have an increased understanding of nuclear physics, increased awareness of the relevance of nuclear physics to everyday life and realise that radiation is universally present and not always harmful. Through hands-on activities and a novel eye-catching exhibition, incorporating virtual multimedia elements, participants will recognise that fundamental science is fun and interactive. Visitors from STEM communication and scientific research communities, who will be included, may wish to initiate future collaborative opportunities, providing further dissemination of our resources.

One of the major aims of our programme is dedicated to distributing our resources amongst educators. We plan to hold a teacher training event to launch our outreach activities. This would create the opportunity for the scattering experiment and BB workshops to be used as teaching resources in a number of schools in the West of Scotland. We would coordinate this via our local STEM hub, Science Connects (https://www.gla.ac.uk/explore/scienceconnects/), to maximise our reach. Teachers from schools with disadvantaged students would be targeted to widen the reach of the project. We will also invite any educational partners we may establish at the upcoming Scottish Wonder Match event in November 2018 to this training. Members of the NHP research group have applied to attend this upcoming Wonder Match event. The training event will include a scattering experiment workshop and the chance to build the full LEGO nuclide chart whilst participating in a BB masterclass. Teachers would subsequently be supplied with worksheet and lesson planning resources related to these workshops, in addition to having the chance to borrow a small scale LEGO set and a scattering set. These could be used for classroom lessons and then returned to us for other teachers to use in the same way. We have requested funding to purchase enough LEGO for one new small scale set, and have been granted use of four equivalent sets, as an in-kind contribution, from UoY for these purposes. We have also requested funds to construct two new scattering set ups to loan. Science Connects have agreed to act as the hub for storing the sets. Teachers could borrow the sets over a period extending the Spark Award dates, to allow sufficient use of equipment during term time. We expect that up to two classes could be held per set per week. After consulting with Science Connects, we expect to recruit roughly 50 teachers for the training event, with around 75% likely performing subsequent classroom lessons.

Coordinating our events via Science Connects will publicise our outreach programme amongst STEM scientist, educator and communicator communities in Glasgow and the West of Scotland. We will also invite locally registered STEM ambassadors to help us with our events. This will make them aware of our outreach programme, the ideas we will develop, and the resources which could be made available to them. We will submit an application to hold our teacher training during the annual GSF - one of the largest UK science festivals, engaging up to at least 50k people annually and also targeting a range of locally under-served communities (http://www.glasgowsciencefestival.org.uk/events/sciencefestival/aboutus/). If successful in this bid, this will further widen access to our resources amongst STEM communicators.

We will create a web page related to our outreach programme, on which we will upload the resources we will develop. In addition, a BB web page already exists (https://www.york.ac.uk/physics/public-and-schools/secondary/binding-blocks/), as well as BB social media accounts (Twitter, Youtube) - all of which we will refer to in our own online documentation. Collaboration with BB will help disseminate our resources in the UK. We will provide our web link on all reference and display materials, including our exhibition, so that interested participants can easily reach the appropriate contacts and find further information and download links to retrieve copies of our resources.

Coinciding with INPC2019 will yield ample opportunities to inform other scientists of our resources, and network with those interested in outreach. Our programme will be heavily advertised during INPC2019. The events will take place at the conference venue, and we expect a number of delegates to also visit the exhibition. Following this, if they wish to find out more about the potential for using our resources elsewhere, even internationally, they will be directed to our web pages and the relevant contacts.