Several of the Manhattan High physics students had the opportunity to attend physics presentations on April 4 at Kansas State University to experience some physics related presentations.
The trip began with a lecture by a KSU physics professor on a subatomic particle known as a ghost particle.
“It [the presentation topic] was neutrinos, and it was pretty interesting,” sophomore Graham Brueseke said. “And then they had us go and do this little python programming thing, which I found to be a bit tedious.”
Students were allowed to work with real data received from KSU and work with programs that would be used in real physics occupations. Attendees were given the opportunity to work with Python and a Google Collaboration program. Some of the data was taken from an experiment that started in Chicago and connected to a reactor in Minnesota.
‘It’s [the programs] like a real world tool that they use in that field. So it kind of gave, you know, a hands-on approach to stuff they actually use day to day,” senior Grady Carrier said.
After they got to experience some hands-on work they got a tour of the nuclear reactor at KSU.
“I don’t just see a nuclear reactor, in principle; it’s kind of cool. but it also looks cool too,” Bruekseke said. “Like the way they have the water set up and stuff is just very interesting and it’s just a cool, cool building.”
After the tour of the nuclear reactor they were able to see some lasers that are used for real experiments.
“They had giant lasers that they fired for different experiments and stuff,” Bruekseke said. “Thankfully, none of them were on because if they were on, we would all need protective gear and stuff.”
This gave the students from Manhattan high school more of a view on how much physics can be in various occupations that they may be interested in striving for.
“We went to a laser lab, and they talked about the real life applications of what they do there and how the lasers work in our day-to-day lives, like in our phones and computers and what not,” Carrier said.
Students that attended agree that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. They report that they learned a lot about physics, neutrinos, nuclear power plants and how our world works. This was a chance to connect the in class physics to real world practice.
“I really enjoyed the opportunity to use real world tools to do hands-on learning,” Carrier said.
