The outreach team visited the 8th grade classroom of physical science teacher, Anne Gleed, for a full week of demonstrations and activities. Demonstrations included current carrying wires and their effect on permanent magnets and looking at magnetic fields around permanent magnets with the help of iron filings. Activities included wrapping coils of wire (hooked up to a battery) that would “hop” when placed near magnets and looking at a loudspeaker that had been taken apart to spot the coil and permanent magnet inside.

The main activity focused on Walkalong Gliders where students and teachers designed and tested lightweight and slow flying model aircrafts. Erik Herman from Xraise was posed with questions about how the gliders worked, the type of materials used to make them and hypothetical questions about what would happen to the gliders in different environments. After making their gliders, the students got to test them around the room and improve on their design.

Staff scientist Detlef Smilgies arranged an opportunity for graduate students in the D1 group to mentor students in the Cornell School of Material Science and Engineering. Professor Chekesha Liddell Watson of the Cornell Department of Materials Science and Engineering offered a course on the instruments and commonly used analytical methods encountered in the fields of physics and material sciences as part of the undergrad senior curriculum.

The school averages 320 children per year, 66% of whom, in 2014, receive free lunch, and 4% more receive reduced lunch. This large percentage of the school population is less likely to have: family backgrounds in the sciences and engineering, general background information to apply to solving problems in society, early school readiness skills for developing an inquiry focus, exposure to role models and innovators, and other privileged access to exploring the world at large.

Cornell University’s first STEP grant opened on July 1, 2015 and provides opportunities for 99 student participants in grades 7-12 to succeed in pre-college performance and ultimately in their science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) higher education pursuits. STEP serves economically disadvantaged and underrepresented minority students in the Ithaca City School District, specifically DeWitt Middle School, Boynton Middle School and Ithaca High School.

In addition to the research they are doing in our laboratory, each of these summer interns is giving six hours of their time to science in the community organized through our outreach program, Xraise. This arrangement allows the undergraduates an opportunity to hone their skills of public communication and interpersonal skills, while pushing them to articulate difficult concepts in an easily digestible way.

A key element of Xraise's mission--in fulfillment of NSF's broader impacts criterion—is to connect people to Synchrotron Science. One way we do that is through the resources we offer K-12 teachers as part of our Lending Library.

Furthermore, many engineering departments have committed themselves to developing educational programs that deepen students’ understanding of fundamental concepts, enhance students’ active participation in learning, and establish engineering’s role in meeting the needs of a global society. The U.S.

In response to teachers’ requests, the new Next Generation Science Standards that promote engineering design, and as part of Xraise’s growing mobile science program, the Xraise team developed and launched a prototype traveling Tinker Cart during the spring of 2016. The Cart holds supplies for one class of elementary school students to participate in the science and engineering activities.

The materials would include donated recyclables already available at the reinvention station at the Sciencenter as well as materials provided by Xraise, including hobby motors, batteries, LED's, electrical tape and other miscellaneous items. Guests would be free to play and build whatever they would like, with the activity being open-ended and entirely creative. In order for such an initiative to be successful, staff at both organizations would need to rely on the oversight of a dedicated set of volunteers.