Projects

Teachers' Corner - Opportunities for Extended Student Projects

Electric Circuits Are you looking for extended projects for students, perhaps for a special interest course or an after-school club? LIGO has put together a basic electronics kit that allows students to develop fundamental circuitry skills while building a succession of circuits that behave in interesting ways. Using printed materials for guidance, students learn to recognize circuit components and install these on breadboards. Digital multimeters provide opportunities for measuring voltage and resistance values. Students can work at their own pace, learning how to troubleshoot as they go. The design, development, verification, installation and use of circuits is a major actiity at LIGO. In the circuitry unit, students will learn to think like electrical engineers. An extension of the this unit invites students to build and test circuits in software using a freeware simulator and an accompanying tutorial.

Computer Programming Another principal activity at LIGO is the writing of computer programs for both detector operations and data analysis. Although students are generally skilled and intuitive in the use of applications, few have had the opportunity to write code from scratch that instructs the computer to do specific tasks. Using step-by-step tutorial materials that facilitate an independent approach, students can start from the simplest computer program, "Hello, world," and move forward to more advanced routines. The programing unit provides a great environment for applied math. A freeware code interpreter is required for this unit.

Seismic Data Analysis with I2U2 Students can plot data from LIGO's seismometer network using the LIGO I2U2 e-Lab. The e-Lab provides links to resources such as the USGS seismic network, allowing students to identify earthquakes in LIGO's data. Investigations of wind-related seismicity and human-generated seismic noise are also possible. I2U2 e-Labs require only an internet connection and a browser. No software downloads are necessary.

Contact LIGO via outreach(at)ligo-wa.caltech.edu or 509-372-8248 for more information about these extended opportunities for students.

Last modified Oct 6, 2009
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LIGO is supported by the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation