For Girls - Kode with Klossy this summer!

 A two-week, intense, but FREE, summer coding camp that has a focus on girls is Kode with Klossy. This comes recommended by students who have taken it, and they loved it. Coding is part of any area of science at this point, so everyone should plan on having a course or other experience where the opportunity to learn to code (in whatever language) is available. Check it out, girls! 

Phys.Org's Top 20 articles for 2020

 Some really fascinating research and results coming from the top 20 articles from phys.org. 

Check some out, and enjoy! Let these motivate you to be one of the next scientists to make memorable and important discoveries! 

Hydraulic jump - Effects on a jump of shape of object jet lands on

 Here's a really interesting experimental idea that can lead to a vast number of variations for students to create an original research study. Set up a hydraulic jump experiment, which consists of a water source and a stream of falling water (i.e. the water jet in a jump experiment) that lands on a hard surface. 

The idea is to put a 3D object of whatever shape at the location where the jet of water is supposed to land on a flat surface. The water in the jet flows over the surface of the object, and then onto the flat surface, where the experimentalist then measures whatever jump and pattern that takes place. Here is an example of an experiment where hemispheres, spheres, cubes and cylinders were used. Students can use whatever shaped objects they have lying around their house or school lab, or they can design and create any shaped 3D object with a 3D printer, ceramics, clay, or other material that is available. 

Numerous options await - be creative with the shapes of the objects being used. Measure the flow patterns and any jumps that form under a wide variety of conditions. You can vary the height from which the water jet falls, the diameter of the jet, the dimensions of the object on which a water jet falls, the material from which the 3D object is made, the orientation of the object relative to the jet, and so on. One may nbe interested in trying to find a mathematical parameter that should be added to theoretical treatments of hydraulic jump, when one needs to account for the shape of the surface water lands on. 

6 Questions Physicists ask when evaluating a scientific claim of discovery

 To many, science is the process of discovery and trying to find the 'facts' of how the world works. It is supposed to be unbiased, nonpartisan, and pure. But don't ever forget that science is done and practiced by human beings, all of whom are imperfect, have biases, and make mistakes, just like everyone else. We are not 'all knowing' and have all the answers, and we never will. 

Having said this, what is the real story for how scientists go about their work? How do we know whether or not to believe a scientific claim by others? How and why should we evaluate others' work to justify their conclusions, especially when it is something important in the field or something never seen or claimed by anyone before? 

Check out this nice piece, from Symmetry magazine (this is very good if you like particle physics), which uses examples from particle physics to demonstrate how science is actually a little messy, but most importantly human - and 'facts' in science do change! Scientists are willing to change their minds over time as new results, often the result of new technologies and methods and data sets, because discovering real truth is a long, difficult process. There always is and should be debate and skepticism, but also open minds that are willing to accept new results that contradict old ones. There needs to be an open process or peer reviewed publications and presentations at conferences, so other experts can review a colleague's work openly and completely to check for mistakes or misinterpretations of the data. This is why it takes time to do science the 'right way.' 

A great message from a former NASA astronaut for STEM students - how to think about making the world a better place through STEM

 Many of us are not familiar with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, established in 2015. These are 17 goals most nations of the world agreed to work on and make significant progress in by 2030, and most of them will require STEM to develop viable solutions to make a better, more sustainable world for humanity. 

To make a different kind of connection with the mindset, skills, knowledge, and approach to work on the SDGs, check out the thoughts of former teacher and astronaut Ms. Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger. She talks about how her training and experiences in NASA overlap with what we all need to make progress in creating a better world for future generations. This video presentation comes from the SOS4Love Project, and was presented at the 2020 UN Peace Week last week. Please check it out! 

Something fun/weird/disturbing to think about! Are we in a simulation?!?!

 For those of you who like video games and science fiction stories and serious modern physics, this is a nice combination to take a look at and think about! Could our lives and this universe we perceive be part of a, effectively, a video game? Scientific American has an article about some bizarre theoretical possibilities that arise when we think of multiple, hidden dimensions along with other big ideas in modern physics. Will it ever be possible to find evidence for something like this??? Time will tell! Take a look!

Nobel Prizes for 2020

 The first week of October is usually Nobel week. Check out the science winners: 

 The Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology goes to 3 Americans for discovering the Hepatitis C virus, which affects millions of people worldwide. 

The Nobel Prize in Physics goes to 3 (a Brit, German, and American woman; only the 4th woman in history for a Physics Nobel!) who did pioneering work in black hole research. 

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to 2 women for the first time, for developing CRISPR technology and methods. 

And congratulations to the World Food Programme, which won the Peace Prize - they fed over 100,000,000 people this past year around the world, during the COVID pandemic. Amazing! 

Strange physics of viscous fluids...perhaps some cool research projects to try!!

 Some fascinating new results from studying more viscous fluids have been done and captured on video. Check this out if you want to see some strange, fascinating fluid effects. Perhaps there are some things to try in a lab if one could set up similar systems! 

See what the Top 40 Finalists in the Regeneron STS did! Get ideas, get inspired!

  These are high school students with a lot of curiosity who were fascinated by some topic and question, and did the long, hard work to investigate it and find answers! Don't underestimate what teens are capable of, but unleash them and see what they can do!! 

The 2020 Top 40 Finalists in the Regeneron Science Talent Search, top prize $250,000 to one student! 

SSP High School Research Teachers Conference online for 2020 - Register!

 The Society for Science and the Public, SSP, that runs the Science Talent Search and International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), is holding its annual High School Research Teachers Conference virtually for 2020, and for any teacher who is interested. This will take place October 2-4, and you can register for the conference. Having attended and presented in the past, it is a wonderful event and you will become part of a great network of colleagues from all over the country. 

Teachers: Apply for SSP Research Grant for At-home projects

The Society for Science and the Public (SSP) is offering 100 grants to teachers, for $1000 apiece, if you have students who need some basic supplies to do independent research projects at home during the COVID era. If your school has 25% or more underrepresented student population, you should be eligible. Deadline is September 1, 2020. Give it a try - this can be especially useful for students who want to do life science or chemistry projects. Good luck! 

Application for Regeneron Science Talent Search open

The Science Talent Search is the biggest and most prestigious high school science contest there is. Run by the Society for Science and the Public and now sponsored by Regeneron, the top prize for an individual student is $250,000! Yes, you read that correctly!

The application is now open for any senior who has done independent, original research. Have fun with it!!

CABS website overview

If you want a brief overview of what this website is all about, and what types of information can be found on various pages, check out this video. Have a look, explore the site, and see if any potential science research questions or topics is interesting - and then try to figure it out by developing your own experimental project!

CABS as an option if summer research program is cancelled

Due to COVID-19 and state shutdowns, summer research programs and lab opportunities for high school students and undergrads in college have been closing and cancelled. While this is truly disappointing, it is the safe and right thing to do to prevent a possible second-wave of the pandemic.

The CABS approach, which provides options and potential research ideas and questions for different areas of science, does not require professional labs or equipment. While this type of home research is not nearly as 'sexy' as working on cancer treatments or doing low temperature research at nearly absolute zero, it can be legitimate original science research. It can be competitive in local, state and national science contests. It is publishable in high school research platforms and even in teacher professional journals.

Please consider it if you still are interested in going through the science process from scratch. Go to the pages that are linked on the right side of the home page to begin finding research ideas and questions. And stay curious!! That is at the core of being a scientist!

Former students do a CABS type project to help fight COVID-19

Former students, now attending Vanderbilt University in Nashville, came up with an idea to help fight COVID-19. Cell phones are things we all use and touch, especially teens and college students, dozens if not hundreds of times per day. And we touch our phones constantly after doing any daily tasks, which involves touching all sorts of other items, sometimes in public spaces. What if there are patches of objects covered by a virus like COVID-19? That means our phones can be covered with the virus and easily transferred to any other location we go. While we hopefully wash our hands, the virus could still be on our phone!

These students found an article with an interesting bit of information, that COVID-19 did not remain on copper surfaces. What if a cheap copper plated cell phone case could be made and sold? The students worked on the specs, got a 3-D printed prototype of a case, and then copper plated it themselves in a garage. They are now getting ready to sell these special cases. Check out how they describe going through this process! 

Worth a watch: Why social distancing and masks are effective in slowing the spread of disease

It is worth watching how scientists can watch what we all put out when we sneeze and talk. Droplets and microdroplets are released into the air and spread, especially in closed spaces. Check out this video to literally see these droplets, some as small as 1 micron (1 millionth of a meter!).

Biophysics, mechanical engineering option with Onions

A student is doing an interesting project, which she thought of when making dinner one evening. When getting an onion ready for chopping, the thin layers of skin of the onion gained her attention, and project ideas began to be born.

Consider stretching out a layer of onion skin over the opening of a tube and securing the skin so it is a membrane covering the tube. One could then begin to place small, uniform weights on the surface as a measure of strength, before any tears form in the skin layer. One could also try to stretch the skin by pulling on it, perhaps with thread hanging over a small pulley where weights could hang.

With these types of experimental techniques, one could then start using multiple layers of skins and see how those compare to single layers. One could try skins from different types of onions, or from other types of plants. If one found differences between different types of skins, checking out the structures under a microscope could reveal engineering ideas for human-made materials. Biomimetics is a huge area of research, looking for natural materials and patterns that can be translated into practical devices for people, and this type of experiment could be used in that capacity.

Think about other plants and natural objects or structures you could test and explore, and see if there is some information we could gain that could help society.

Faraday waves - could be a rich source of projects

In fluid dynamics, Faraday waves are an interesting phenomenon. Not having a background in fluids, Faraday waves were something I wasn't fully aware of until a student made an accidental discovery. When she was starting to look at vertically shaking a Petri dish of water (inspired by methods of creating oscillons in vertically shaken Petri dishes of granular materials), she noticed patterns of waves on the surface of single drops of water on the oscillator. These are Faraday waves, which can be investigated in a fairly simple experimental setup.

Because the student observed similar waves and phenomena on droplets, and not finding any articles in the literature about formal studies of droplets (past research seemed to be like the university lab linked above - water and other liquids in a container, with boundaries (walls) and a relatively flat, 2-D surface), she decided to pursue it and try and find deviations from 2-D surfaces to a more 3-D, curved surface of a small drop of water. Note that studies like this can also be written up and submitted for publication in teacher journals, where we can offer ideas for classroom demos, labs, inquiry projects, and research projects.

This is a wonderful way to create new, novel research projects. On so many topics and phenomena, look at old experiments, think about the parameters that are relevant to those experiments, and then start thinking about ways of taking different parameters, or combinations of parameters, and thinking about what a new experiment would look like. With Faraday waves, think about other ways of tweaking the more traditional experiments to find new things to look at in slightly different ways. As one suggestion, if a student has access to a 3-D printer, imagine the endless surfaces with different shaped indentations one could make, fill those indentations with small amounts of water or any other liquid, and test to see if Faraday waves are formed, and what their properties are as a function of geometry!

One example of 'basement science' going wrong!

A humorous example of 'basement science' going wrong happened in Australia, where an astrophysicist, stuck in isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, had an idea to make a device that would warn someone when they were about to touch their face. He was using small, strong magnets that would be both on one's wrists and in one's nose, and the magnetic forces when close together would sound an alarm.

Trouble is, multiple magnets got stuck in his nose, and he was unable to get them out - a trip to the hospital was in order!

On that note, happy researching to all at home during these trying times!! I do wish good health and safety - physically, mentally, and emotionally - to everyone, while we continue to be in isolation.

Former CABS student modeling the COVID-19 virus spread in Europe

A former student and CABS researcher, Seth Flaxman (Class of 2004), is lead author from Imperial College on predictions of COVID-19 in the coming weeks in 11 European countries. Check out their report, and see what a technical, scientific paper on this type of problem looks like. He made the code available, which is on GitHub, as well, if you want to see what this looks like for a complex system to model. Within the next week, most of the growth charts should start to turn over and begin the flattening of the curve...hopefully Europe is moving past the inflection point. Note that they do show the range of uncertainties, as all good studies should, because of limitations in data and testing, statistical effects and fluctuations it creates in the modeling, and so on. I have not found a similar, up to date report for the US yet. This is the type of research one can do with a good background and expertise in computer programming.

Thanks, Seth!! Seth did some really cool CABS research on periodic heat flow while in high school, and actually went to London to represent the US through the JSHS contest (which he won at regionals, and then did well at nationals to advance as one of six US students to the International fair). He built the experiment in his bedroom, and also modeled the heat flow using a free version of FlexPDE.

Student Research Publishing Options

With the unfortunate circumstances of COVID-19, all student events and competitions around the country have been cancelled, including the International Science and Engineering Fair, or ISEF. Many students who have done wonderful research and qualified at their regional and state fairs will not have the chance to present their work. Those students may want to consider trying to publish their papers in some of the following student journals, listed below. 

Of course, for students who work in university labs, if you get good results, your professor may very well want to publish. Students can and have be first or second author on such papers, and this is a rarity for high school students - it is worth asking a professor if results might be publishable.

A third option is for teachers and schools to have a website or page dedicated to posting student reports. This is a good idea so they are at least online, and can be used as good examples of high school work for future students. Here is one example, with dozens of papers from former students (with their permission) that are often used by current students to get ideas, see what research looks like for a high school student, and also are used as a template when a current student is writing up his/her research. 

Students can submit their research papers to the following journals for publication:

• Sigma Xi, Chronicle of the New Researcher
• The Columbia Junior Science Journal
• Journal of Emerging Investigators (all papers accepted, grad student review)
• National High School Research Journal of Science (student-reviewed)

Journal of Experimental Secondary Science (peer reviewed)

• *Note that many CABS projects can be used by other teachers as lab demos, students labs, or inquiry projects for their students. You might consider writing a paper, co-authored between student and teacher, and submit to teacher professional journals, such as The Physics Teacher or The Science Teacher.

Why the rush to Shut Schools and Large Public Spaces and Events down???

We are in an unprecedented time of shutting many aspects of civilization down around the world, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But why the rush and urgency???

It is the math and science behind how a disease spreads, which is referred to as exponential growth. Please check out a really well done explanation of what this means, how it works, and how experts use a mathematical model to simulate the spread of a disease. It uses actual data from China to make its point, and you will get the gist of why social distancing and washing hands make such a BIG DIFFERENCE in the number of people who might become infected. For anyone who does math modeling, it also explains sensitivity testing really well.

Please check it out, and gain new appreciation for some of the math you learn in school but might not know how it is applied to the world!

Patterns formed by evaporating fluids

Some really beautiful patterns have been observed through evaporative processes of droplets of fluids, especially when the droplets contain a mixture of different fluids. This type of work could be done in a high school laboratory or at home. Check out the video.

Two hydraulic jumps on an incline

One way professors run their research programs, and as they go from year to year and have new graduate students joining their team while older ones graduate and leave the team, is to have extension on earlier projects and studies. Good research projects are those that have interesting questions studied, but when answers are found there are even more new questions developed because of the study.

Hence, something like hydraulic jump continuously provides new, original research options. For example, one option is to have multiple streams of water forming multiple jumps, that can interfere with each other. Another option is to study jumps on inclined surfaces. But what about combining those studies into one? This is an option a student recently has done, as a preliminary project. Check out the video for some pointers about how ANYONE can do this at a school or at home, and how there are so many more questions that can come from this preliminary one: from the fits of these data, can someone take existing theoretical math models for single jumps and modify it, at least as an empirical formula, to make a math model for interfering jumps? For jumps on an angle, where a component of gravity enters the model? And then for the combination of the two? What about interference patterns one can see in the video for this project? All of those flow details are not yet studied and documented! Numerous more projects can be developed just from this one study. Be creative, explore, ask questions, and the build an experiment to look into your questions - this is science research at its finest!

Check out Ulo Freitas's video for how he did a preliminary study of interfering hydraulic jumps on an incline.

Initial study of interfering dual hydraulic jumps on incline

A good example of an original basement science research project is setting up an apparatus to create and study the interference of two hydraulic jumps on an inclined surface. There was a study done by a student at his house for two interfering hydraulic jumps on a flat surface some years ago at Evanston, but now a student was interested in taking that type of study and tilt the surface through a range of angles. Preliminary results are in a paper the student wrote.

There is an extension that can be done on this experiment. One possibility is to try even larger angles, as well as vary the flow rates of one or both of the jets. For any of these studies, one could also take the best-fit functions of these data and modify existing theoretical equations for jump radii - an empirical formula at the very least could be developed to explain this phenomenon.

On the engineering side, Rocketry a possible option

For those students and teacher who look for engineering challenges, don't forget about rocketry. This is a huge hobbyist field, and there are so many commercial kits and sets one can purchase (many smaller rockets can be purchased for under $100, for instance). And there are also so many videos available on YouTube and other rocketry sites to get ideas for building your own.

Learn about structures and the stresses they undergo on a launch, the chemistry of rocket fuels and motors, the areas of physics called aerodynamics and fluid mechanics, electronics if you want Arduino or Raspberry pi based sensors in the rocket, and so on. This could be a nice way to build interest among larger groups of students and just start with purchased kits; learn from the kits, and let students begin to make their own designs and test them. Just something to consider if there is an interest.

At the college level, many engineering colleges and universities will have rocketry clubs. Check out USC's rocket, the first to have an all-student group build, from scratch, a rocket that surpassed the Karman line, which is the established boundary something needs to cross to be considered in space.

Check out this article and video of a rhenium molecule moving around two carbon nanotubes. You can see the two atoms move far apart, when the bond breaks, and then re-bonds back into the molecule. VERY COOL!! This is but another example of incredible electron microscopy techniques that your generation has available, and who knows what remains to be invented and discovered with such instruments. While this is outside the realm of 'basement science,' it never hurts to see what is out there as high school students, so you can have some sense of what awaits you should you pursue STEM in college and beyond!