Three recent high school graduates from Notre Dame’s QuarkNet program are headed to France on Friday to present at the International Planetarium Society Conference.
QuarkNet is a program for science teachers and students to learn new ways to teach particle physics.
In France students Julianna Meyer, Fiona Hughes and Rose Kelly are presenting a planetarium show they’ve created on particle physics.
They took an existing scripted planetarium show and turned it on it’s head, making it more interactive by asking audience questions and letting the viewer choose which part of the presentation they would like to see.
“We started off our presentation with what we call the hub," said Rose Kelly. "So the hub shows three different assets, representing the three different aspects of our presentation.”
They hope their presentation will give other planetariums ideas on how to teach other science topics in an interactive way.
“I think a lot of science topics can be very easily explored or explored to a very significant depth in the planetarium,” Julianna Meyer said.
They leave for France on Friday and return on July 8. You can follow their trip on their vlog.