Department of Training and Consulting - Overview

Full text: The Department of Training and Consulting regularly serves secondary schools pupils and teachers, university students and the public. As usual we have been visited by over 6400 visitors, mainly students from secondary schools in Poland. In the opinion of the teachers the outcome of all visits was very positive. In addition, special courses on radioactivity and nuclear energy dedicated to teachers were organized. Many lectures have been delivered outside of the Department, in schools, universities and institutes. The Department is constantly developing experiments that can be conducted by students of secondary schools and universities, as well as by professionals. At the moment there are about 28 experiments available for the guests of the Department. The list of experiments and their descriptions can be found on our home page http://dsid.ipj.gov.pl. They cover the measurement of lifetimes, essential elements of radioprotection, absorption of radiation in various materials, excitation of fluorescence radiation, influence of magnetic fields on beta radiation as well as on electrons emitted from a typical electron gun, Compton scattering and elements of gamma spectroscopy, the search for radioactive pollution, the basics of the wave-particle dualism of matter, and the recently added Frank-Hertz experiment and radioactive decay of thoron. For the fifth time the Department has organized (together with the Institute of Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw) '' The Physical Pathways '' competition for students of secondary schools. The students could choose one of three possibilities (even all of them): either to submit a scientific paper, to present a demonstration of a physical phenomena, or to write an essay on the connection between physics and the development of civilization. They could also submit work prepared by a team of up to 3 persons. The level of the competition turned out to be very high. The competition apparently attracts more and more talented youth. The Department participates actively in Science Festivals and Picnics for the general public. In 2010, our team was present during the Science Festivals in Warsaw and Rzeszow. In all these events, in addition to the series of lectures, many simple demonstrations of the properties of nuclear radiation as well as a simulator of a nuclear reactor control were presented. The Department also took part and gave demonstrations during the annual Science Picnic in Warsaw. In addition to outreach activity, physicists in the Department are involved in investigations of solid-state properties, and in the influence of ionizing radiation on humans. (author)