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Radiation Literacy for everyone

Nonscience students can understand radiation and radioactivity!

The Inquiry into Radioactivity (IiR) project is developing and disseminating course materials for students in survey level college physics courses and high school courses to understand ionizing radiation, its nuclear origins, its effects on health, and the connection to nuclear power.  The purposes of the IiR project are to promote radiation literacy, to provide physics educators with a low-stakes (and fun!) opportunity to try out inquiry teaching, and to make available a set of useful tools that faculty can adapt for their own use.

These research-based materials – a full semester of inquiry instruction – address general properties of ionizing radiation, interaction of radiation with matter (including health effects), the origins of radiation and nuclear waste. The materials address numerous student difficulties that have been identified through repeated classroom trials and classroom research.

The materials are being developed by Dr. Andy Johnson at Black Hills State University with crucial help from  field testers and student assistants. This project was supported by the National Science Foundation under TUES grant DUE 0942699.

 

 

Students in an IiR classroom

The IiR materials are composed of four modules or “cycles” covering these topics:

  1. Basic properties of ionizing radiation
  2. Atoms as sources and victims of ionizing radiation
  3. Interaction of radiation with matter, and health effects
  4. Nuclear fission, nuclear power, and nuclear waste

Each of these topic areas presents challenges to students.  Our research has identified the major challenges, and tools and strategies in the course materials address each challenge.