Between August and October 2011, more than 650 physics students from 53 Victorian high schools participated in full-day laboratory sessions at the Australian Synchrotron, measuring electron beams, photoelectrons, laser diffraction and emission spectra.

The hands-on laboratory sessions support the (optional) synchrotron detailed study unit ‘synchrotron and its applications’ in the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) physics course and the ‘interactions of light and matter’ section of the central physics course. The sessions were conducted by the synchrotron’s education and outreach officer Jonathan de Booy, a former high school physics teacher.

“Our education lab equipment mimics the synchrotron’s x-ray equipment so we can offer more of a genuine user experience using visible light to demonstrate the same principles that apply to the x-ray equipment used here by researchers,” Jonathan says.

Comments from physics teachers who have attended the synchrotron sessions with their year 12 students indicate that the lab sessions are widely considered of benefit to students. One teacher said that Jonathan’s “explanations of physics concepts alone make this excursion essential for my year 12 physics classes”.

Jonathan is currently devising ways to offer synchrotron-related activities to chemistry students and hopes to eventually be able to provide activities for biology students as well.

Click here for “A new wave of synchrotron scientists”, a feature article published in Chemistry in Australia, November 2011, pages 32-6.


Right: year 12 students from Brighton Secondary College measure diffraction images at the Australian Synchrotron.

Below: the Australian Synchrotron stocks specialised equipment for high school physics experiments.