outreach

From Yahoo! Finance, Feb. 11, 2020: A new monumental exhibit of the most women statues ever assembled in one location, at one time, is a first-of-its-kind, life-sized 3-D printed statue exhibit of more than 120 AAAS IF/THEN® ambassadors. Fermilab scientist Jessica Esquivel is one of the IF/THEN® ambassadors. The exhibit will be free to the public and will debut at Dallas’s NorthPark Center on Friday, May 1.

From Naperville Community Television, Feb. 10, 2020: Fermilab opened its doors once again for their 16th annual Family Open House. The free event aims to teach the community about physics while having fun doing it, which is one reason people decided to come out. The crowd of around 2,500 people met Fermilab scientists and engineers to get a closer look into the world of physics. Creating that scientific spark in the younger generation is one of the laboratory’s goals. Watch the two-minute segment.

From The Beacon-News, Feb. 9, 2020: Fermilab’s Family Open House was a day dedicated to discovering the wonders of science as the lab offered its 16th annual open house event, which organizers said was again geared toward “sharing science with our neighbors” as well as opening young minds to career possibilities.

In an educational turning of the tables, first- through fifth-graders evaluated Fermilab scientists’ abilities to illuminate and educate at their school’s first reverse science fair. Three competing groups of scientists demoed neutrino detection, muon precession and particle acceleration in fun, accessible ways, and the elementary school students got to decide who received the blue ribbon.

From Kane County Chronicle, Feb. 5, 2020: Some people might think that Fermilab physicists are unapproachable eggheads, probing the deepest mysteries of science from their secluded laboratories without personal lives or connections to the rest of humanity. At their first reverse science fair, students at J.B. Nelson Elementary found out Fermilab scientists are just like everyone else — they aren’t geniuses. They just like science a lot.

From Kane County Chronicle, Feb. 4, 2020: This year’s events will feature The Great Neutrino Hunt, The Mr. Freeze Cryogenics Show, live physics demonstrations, a physics carnival developed and presented by high school students, and several activities for kids and their parents. The event also will feature tours of the Linear Accelerator Gallery and the Muon g-2 experiment and a driving tour of the site.

From The Beacon-News, Jan. 30, 2020: Physics lovers of all ages are invited to the annual Fermilab Family Open House from 1 to 5 p.m. Feb. 9. Fermilab’s Amanda Early talks about how kids and grownups alike will get excited about science through the demos and tours at this free event.

Science Storytellers brings together two groups of innately curious individuals: scientists and children. In the Science Storytellers program, kids act as science journalists interviewing real-life scientists. Afterward, they share what they learned. Research shows that transmitting scientific knowledge to the public is important, but actually shifting someone’s opinions requires engaging with them in a two-way dialogue and treating them as a whole, complicated person with knowledge, experiences and influences of their own.

Since 2010, the African School of Fundamental Physics and Applications has provided education to hundreds of students. The ASP is a three-week summer program for university-level students from across the continent of Africa. Participants learn about nuclear and particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology, accelerator physics, high-performance computing, quantum information and more. For some students, it’s the first time they hear about some of these topics.

From Daily North Shore, Nov. 12, 2019: New Trier Township High School juniors Paul Graham and Ellie Winkler have spent the past year working with a team of 15 other Chicago-area high school students and teachers to propose, design, build and analyze a unique high-energy physics experiment for Fermilab.