Radiation Experiments for
Secondary Students on the Internet

Mr. Donivan Porterfield

Nuclear Materials Technology Division

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Los Alamos, NM

The Internet is finding increasing use in the educational community. However, much of this use is simply the efficient and prompt retrieval or communication of information. In science education this has gone a step further in providing virtual experiments on the Internet. An important aspect of these virtual experiments is that the conduct of the experiment and the results obtained are strictly those that are programmed. This creates the danger that students may not obtain results based on physical law; instead they may obtain results based on the programmer’s erroneous interpretation of physical law. Also, such virtual experiments may limit the creativity of the student in manipulating the experimental parameters.

Advances in Internet server and browser software has set the stage for actual experiments to be conducted on the Internet. Project Emerald at the University of New Mexico is funded by the National Science Foundation and has as its mission to help stimulate undergraduate research opportunities for faculty members in New Mexico’s two-year colleges. One component of Project Emerald is to implement the ability to conduct actual experiments over the Internet. The initial experiment chosen deals with Boyle’s Law.

Providing experiments dealing with radioactivity/radiation to secondary students over the Internet will be discussed in this presentation.