From the South Pole to Stony Brook: IceCube Masterclass Inspires STEM Students

We've all looked up at the sky and pondered the mysteries of our vast universe. For most, it's a passing thought. For others, it's the first step to a career in science.

For those aspiring scientists, Stony Brook's Institute of STEM Education (I-STEM)- in collaboration with the Department of Physics and Astronomyand the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole - hosted the IceCube Masterclass, a one-day research event for local high school students with an interest in the field of astro-particle and nuclear physics. The students were from Long Island's Shoreham-Wading River and Riverhead school districts.

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is the first detector of its kind, designed to observe the cosmos from deep within the South Pole ice. Encompassing a cubic kilometer of ice, IceCube searches for nearly massless subatomic particles called neutrinos. These high-energy astronomical messengers provide information to probe the most violent astrophysical sources: events like exploding stars, gamma-ray bursts, and cataclysmic phenomena involving black holes and neutron stars. The IceCube Collaboration is made up of an international group of more than 450 scientists.

Stony Brook is one of 58 IceCube institutions and one of 21 across the US and Europe to participate in the Masterclass program, held on campus March 27 in the Physics Building. Funding for the event was provided by the US National Science Foundation (NSF).

IceCube Masterclasses give high school students an opportunity to meet researchers, learn more about our universe, and work with international partners. The program, which began in 2014, invites young students and future scientists to learn about particle astrophysics by doing real research. Students learn about astrophysics through lectures and hands-on analysis of data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.

In the morning, attendees got an introduction to IceCube and a short presentation on neutrinos by Joanna Kiryluk, an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, that prefaced the rest of the day. Afterwards they watched an interactive live webcast with Alicia Fattorini and Camille Parisel, researchers at the South Pole, who spoke of their work and experience in Antarctica before taking questions from the students.

After the webcast, students got to spend lunch interacting with members of the Department of Physics and Astronomy. They then conducted an experiment on radiation sources and their detection with Geiger counters.

The lab that followed had them build a cloud chamber.

"The cloud chamber experiment is about making radiation visible, which is something most kids will not have seen before," said Ernst Sichtermann, a physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and one of the presenters. "The experiment brings together the things they've learned today. We have dry ice to make a very cold temperature, which ties in with the work being done at the South Pole that they heard about. Hopefully it sparks an interest in any of these fields."

"Building cloud chambers with students was very rewarding and I enjoyed their reactions to seeing 'invisible particles' with this simple instrument," said Kiryluk. "The students' reactions to measuring radiation with Geiger-Mueller counters were a blast. We are grateful to Frank Chisena [manager, instructional laboratories in the Department of Physics and Astronomy] and Rich Lefferts [technical staff, Department of Physics and Astronomy] for hosting the group in the lab space, and to Haiwen Lu - the Pre-College STEM program director - for connecting the teachers with scientists."

"The Department of Physics and Astronomy Instructional Lab group was happy to host part of the IceCube outreach event," said Lefferts. "It's such a joy to see world-class scientists work with inquisitive, thoughtful and energized students. We hope to have some of these talented students in our lab classes in a year or two."

The event closed with a short talk on neutrino event signatures in IceCube aiming to learn how to classify high-energy neutrino and cosmic ray muons events. In the end, the goal of the day was to give students a taste of STEM and, hopefully, to inspire them.

"We do not have enough of a STEM workforce right now," said Sichtermann. "If somebody decides in the end, 'this is really cool because I can use radioactivity to make runtime images' and becomes a doctor, that's great. And if they decide that this is not for them, at least they've experienced it and made a conscious choice. But somebody here today is a future graduate student."

- Robert Emproto