The Pulsar Search Collaboratory: Expanding Nationwide
arXiv:1807.06059 · doi:10.1119/1.5092473
Abstract
The Pulsar Search Collaboratory (PSC) engages high school students and teachers in analyzing real data from the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope for the purpose of discovering exotic stars called pulsars. These cosmic clocks can be used as a galactic-scale detector of gravitational waves, ripples in space-time that have recently been directly detected from the mergers of stellar-mass black holes. Through immersing students in an authentic, positive learning environment to build a sense of belonging and competency, the goal of the PSC is to promote students' long-term interests in science and science careers. PSC students have discovered 7 pulsars since the start of the PSC in 2008. Originally targeted at teachers and students in West Virginia, over time the program has grown to 18 states. In a new effort to scale the PSC nationally, the PSC has developed an integrated online training program with both self-guided lectures and homework and real-time interactions with pulsar astronomers. Now, any high school student can join in the exciting search for pulsars and the discovery of a new type of gravitational waves.
arXiv comment6 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in The Physics Teacher
References in corpus (5)
- Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger
- The international pulsar timing array project: using pulsars as a gravitational wave detector
- The North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves
- The NANOGrav 11-year Data Set: Pulsar-timing Constraints On The Stochastic Gravitational-wave Background
- The Pulsar Search Collaboratory