From the 15-19th September, eight school students from years 10-11, from secondary schools across South-East Queensland, and even one who travelled from New South Wales, had the unique opportunity to participate in UQ's Astrophysics Work Experience Program.
While here at UQ, the students experienced a UQ lab tour, where they saw cutting-edge research and talked with professional and academic staff about prospective career pathways in the area. They attended a 2nd year Space Science and Stellar Astrophysics lecture to get a feel for University life in STEM.
Two separate science workshops were also run as part of the work experience program. Firstly, Dr Gil Toombes took the students to the Physics Teaching Labaratories where they engaged in learning about “Stellar Spectral Fingerprints” – In this workshop students constructed telescopes and spectroscopes which allowed them to identify hydrogen, sodium, and other atomic species in the sun’s atmosphere.
The UQ Science Demo Troupe ran the second workshop with the students, where they looked at Gravitational lensing, Bernoulli's Principle, gyroscopic motion, topology, and spectral lines to investigate properties used in space exploration and investigation. Both workshops were highlights of the program for these students.
During the work experience program, the students also engaged in some independent project work, investigating the discoveries made by three of the most prominent cosmologists of the 20th century. Edwin Hubble, who found the first experimental evidence for the expansion of the universe, Vera Rubin, who was the first cosmologist to find evidence of dark matter in spiral galaxies, and Brian Schmidt, who won a Nobel prize for discovering the accelerating expansion of the universe. These three discoveries have been pivotal to our understanding of modern cosmology.
The students were invited to present their research project to the Astrophysics group at the end of the week. This enabled them to showcase their hard work and improve their communication and presentation skills.
The Astrophysics Work Experience Program provided students a glimpse into the world of Astrophysics, and helped them develop valuable knowledge and skills that will be useful in their future science studies.
