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ANS helps educators teach nuclear science

La Grange Park, IL  (May 26, 2006) - On Saturday June 3rd at the Truckee Meadows Community College, in Reno, Nevada, science educators from local high schools and middle schools will take part in a workshop designed to help them educate their students and highlight growing career opportunities in the nuclear science and technology field.

The American Nuclear Society workshop titled, "Detecting Radiation in Our Radioactive World," will provide hands-on activities for teachers, using many ordinary materials found around the house to explain nuclear science in the classroom.

Activities Include:
• Creating a mini-cloud using dry ice to show trails of radioactive emissions not normally visual with the naked eye that reveals how radiation is all around us but we just never see it.
• Changing salt exposed to gamma radiation, similar to x-rays that is brownish in color back to white, representing how items can store gamma radiation but won't make the item radioactive.

The workshop begins at 8 a.m. and ends around 5 p.m.  Pre-registered teachers who participate in the full-day workshop will receive a $200 Geiger counter, used to detect radiation from background and man made sources for use as a teaching aide in the classroom.  The workshop is designed to provide information and training for educators to address the National Science Education Standards.

This one-day workshop will feature nuclear professionals from government labs, universities and private industries who will share their knowledge on teaching nuclear science and technology and discuss some of the modern applications nuclear science has on industries such as medicine, energy and space exploration.

Funding for the workshop is provided in part by a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology, and through individual contributions to the ANS Public Education Program.

ANS, established in 1954, is a professional organization of scientists and engineers devoted to the applications of nuclear science and technology.  Its 10,500 members come from diverse technical disciplines ranging from physics and nuclear safety to operations and power, and from across the full spectrum of the national and international nuclear enterprise, including government, academia, research laboratories and private industry.
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