Outreach

Outreach is an important part of department life. The “Carolina Physics on the Road” demo show visits area schools and public events such as the annual UNC Science Expo, part of the North Carolina Science Festival. With support from the Stirling Foundation, the department hosts Science is Awesome Day in which hundreds of local fourth-graders from Title IX public schools visit for a day-long field trip supporting NC curricular standards Most Friday evenings, astronomers staff the Morehead Observatory Guest Night, offering fascinating presentations and an opportunity to look through the telescope. The online Skynet control system enables anyone to take an astronomical image using one of many remotely controlled telescopes linked into its worldwide education and research network. Research groups, student groups, and individuals give outreach talks and host activity tables at schools, museums, and special events such as the department’s SHAPE symposium for high school physics teachers, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences “Astronomy Days”, and the Women and Math Program’s Marjorie Lee Browne Day. We also welcome visitors into our labs for tours and sometimes research experiences, through the Carolina ADMIRES program for high school students and two summer programs, a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) at TUNL and a Computational Astronomy and Physics Summer Boot Camp (CAP).