Stephanie and I attended the YWC conducted by PPPL at Princeton University on March 16, 2023. This conference introduces middle-school and high-school-aged girls (in 7th to 10th grades) to women scientists and engineers and the wide breadth of careers available to them in these fields. Prominent women scientists and engineers from around the region spend the day with the girls engaging them in different variety of formats that include small-group presentations, hands-on activities, a keynote address, and a chemistry demo. This event is a great motivation for the girls to choose STEAM as their career.
We had a booth that demonstrated our work in various fields like coding books such as MATLAB Recipes and Machine Learning that have been written by Michael Paluszek, The President of Princeton Satellite Systems and Stephanie Thomas,Vice President of Princeton Satellite Systems.
We had 3D printed models of the Princeton Field reversed Configuration (PFRC), a Poster of Direct fusion drive, Spectroscopy diagnostic poster that demonstrated the visible and X-ray diagnostics that are performed to predict the electron temperature, impurities, and how these vary with other experimental parameters such as pressure, magnetic field and RMF-heated power in PFRC.
I demonstrated how visible light can be split into different wavelengths using a hand-held spectroscope. Visible light waves are electromagnetic waves. We see these waves as the colors of the rainbow. Each color has a different wavelength. Red has the longest wavelength, and violet has the shortest wavelength. These different colors of waves together make white light. The girls enjoyed observing different wavelength colors using the handheld spectroscope It was fascinating to see around 800 students after the Pandemic for this conference.
Lastly, we enjoyed the keynote talk by Dr. Liz Hernandez-Matias. Sr. Educational Specialist, CienciaPR.
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