Participated in most of the IceCube outreach activities, including new ones for me like the Badger Precollege Space Camp, Antarctican Society, and Grandparents University. The Precollege and Grandparents University events involved a new activity for groups of younger children to demonstrate detector calibration concepts. The event at the Antarctican Society was particularly interesting because I was able to connect with a very different type of audience of people knowledgeable about Antarctica, but many had only heard about IceCube on a surface level previously.
These outreach events involved communicating with young children and senior citizens alike about the importance of IceCube research, as well as the underlying physics of the experiment and neutrinos. For WIPAC, we are workshopping new demonstrations and hands-on activities for younger children, which I think is important, particularly for an experiment like IceCube, whose size and methodologies are difficult to convey to younger children.
Generally, I feel more confident tailoring my responses to the appropriate audience, particularly young children, and finding ways to connect with their current understanding of physics. Over the past two years, I have become more confident with public speaking, as this was the focus during more of the outreach events I did this year. This confidence came from addressing a variety of unique questions about my experiment and research, requiring me to think critically about the connections within my physics knowledge.
Physics outreach is important because it educates the public about the science and technicalities behind experiments, their significance, and how they might help humanity. It may also motivate young people to pursue careers in science and provide a more personal sense of what it is like to work with that experiment. The audience can ask questions they might not otherwise have the opportunity to ask.
I intend to continue participating in IceCube outreach events as opportunities arise. This might include many of the same events I have been in, with the goal of incorporating more public speaking (e.g., Badgers on Tap). I have become a reliable volunteer to WIPAC and hope to continue being invited to events.
An issue I see within WIPAC outreach is the lack of public speaking opportunities for graduate students, as the events we do have tend to be very popular and fill up quickly. They offer low-stakes opportunities to discuss one’s research, but I am usually too late to sign up. IceCube and our future upgrade plans would be great topics to bring up during these talks, so I hope to see more of them in the future.