Outreach Highlights

It’s all about mentorship: Inspiring Future Women in Science

In March 2024, 188 female students from 19 high schools across Ontario visited Perimeter Institute to attend the “Inspiring Future Women in Science” conference. Sponsored by Linamar, the annual event connects students with mentors in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). One goal of the conference is to bring together like-minded young women with a strong interest in science. Students got the chance to hear from a wide variety of STEM specialists, including Cristina Mondino, a postdoctoral researcher at Perimeter working to answer questions about the origin, nature, and detectability of dark matter in the universe.

Linamar Corporation is the presenting sponsor of “Inspiring Future Women in Science.”

Making scientific literacy global: EinsteinPlus

Thirty-four educators journeyed from across the world to join EinsteinPlus, a week-long professional development event for teachers put on by Perimeter Institute’s Educational Outreach team in July 2024. The annual program aims to train both Canadian and international high school teachers so that they can reach out to young students, wherever they may be, and inspire their interest in science and modern physics. This year’s participants travelled from across Canada, as well as from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Greece, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, Uruguay, and the US to attend. The event provided new hands-on teaching activities to make physics learning memorable for students and to help inspire the next generation of scientists.

Power Corporation of Canada is a supporter of EinsteinPlus and the Perimeter’s Teacher Network.

Shohini Ghose, Inspiring Future Women in Science 2024

Nature of science: Perimeter’s newest educational resource

This resource, tailored to students in grades 9 and 10, explores how scientists think by making observations and inferences, and teaches students to build models. Many of these activities make excellent additions to the first week of class, when teachers are looking to engage students in thinking tasks that don’t require much prior knowledge. This resource, available in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, includes seven activities designed to teach students how to make inferences, find patterns, and think critically about data.

Shadows and science: Perimeter’s day under the 2024 eclipse

A once in a lifetime event passed by Perimeter this April: a solar eclipse, a phenomenon that occurs when the moon passes between the sun and Earth and plunges a part of the world into twilight. Perimeter Institute faculty, students, and staff took full advantage of this rare astronomical event. To celebrate, Perimeter hosted a viewing party at nearby Waterloo Park, handing out free eclipse glasses for safe viewing and answering questions from the public. Other researchers travelled further afield to watch the eclipse in totality. If you missed the eclipse here, don’t worry. While the next total eclipse in Waterloo is in 82 years, Spain and Iceland will have one in 2026.

Explore Further:

Educational materials for the public ahead of the 2024 eclipse

Want to spark curiosity in the classroom? GoPhysics!

Perimeter Institute’s GoPhysics! workshops give curious students the opportunity to use their high school physics knowledge to dive into modern physics topics through hands-on demonstrations and focused learning activities. The Perimeter Institute Educational Outreach team, including Outreach Scientists Kelly Foyle and Damian Pope, and Perimeter’s two teachers-in-residence, Dave Fish and Ashley McCarl Palmer, travel across Canada to deliver GoPhysics! workshops to students from grades 9 through 12. The workshops bring together high school physics classes from around each visited area, giving students a chance to meet each other, and teachers a chance to network and learn how to bring state-of-the-art teaching techniques back to their classrooms.

In 2023/24, the team’s strategy for engagement focused on remote, rural, Indigenous, and underserved areas, including workshops in Cranberry Portage (Manitoba), Timmins (Ontario), Whitehorse (Yukon), and Blackhurst Cultural Centre in Toronto (Ontario). Of the students who participated in in-person GoPhysics! workshops in 2023/24, 17 percent identified as Indigenous and an additional 40 percent identified as members of other visible minority groups.

Last year, Paul and Cathy Cotton donated $50,000 to fuel the GoPhysics! program, believing in its ability to get young people excited – and keep them excited – about pursuing careers in science.

Explore Further:

Learn more about GoPhysics! on the Perimeter Institute website

It’s all about mentorship: Inspiring Future Women in Science

Making scientific literacy global: EinsteinPlus

Nature of science: Perimeter’s newest educational resource

Shadows and science: Perimeter’s day under the 2024 eclipse

Want to spark curiosity in the classroom? GoPhysics!

Today’s theoretical physics is tomorrow’s technology

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