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2005 NSF Research Experience for Teachers (RET) Program |
| The goal for our summer research is to organize
educational tools that will help teachers incorporate ideas regarding
observational equipment such as microscopes.
An important part of this curriculum aid will be real microscope images
that can be accessed by teachers and students over the Internet. It is our hope that this will help many
teachers incorporate modern technologies into their classrooms, enabling them
to expose their students to exciting opportunities in science while covering
important content and standards. One theme that science teachers can focus on is the use of microscopes in many areas of science and engineering. Science uses many tools in order to study nature. One such tool is the microscope, which allows humans to "see" and therefore understand the world at a more fundamental level. There are many types of microscopes, including light microscopes and electron microscopes. Large particle accelerators (such as those found at Fermilab near Chicago and CERN near Geneva,Switzerland) can also be thought of as very large microscopes, focusing on some of the smallest, most fundamental particles known to humans. It is interesting to note that in order to study smaller and smaller particles, one needs a larger and larger microscope. Using data from each of these types of microscopes is very applicable when studying matter in chemistry, fundamental particles in physics, or cells and micro-organisms in biology. Not only do the microscopes provide material and data to study, but the study of the microscopes themselves has much educational potential. Physics classes, for instance, may be interested in students studying the optics of a light microscope, or the science and engineering behind the operation of an electron microscope, such as the SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) and TEM (Transmission Electron Microscope) available at the University of Minnesota. Particle accelerators offer many opportunities to study electric and magnetic fields, along with applications of conservation of energy, momentum, and relativistic effects. |
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