Abstract:

Working with talented high school students and creating a culture of excellence becomes an important part of education, especially of education of topics in natural sciences. By engagement of talented students in relevant scientific research activities and tutoring them through all phases of activities, students achieve various high-level learning outcomes. Nuclear physics is a relevant topic for analysis of natural processes in the environment, and thus it can be very attractive research topic for talented high school students. Analysis of some of nuclear physics processes in the environment and preparation of related experiments need the collaboration with academic staff at universities and research institutes, which brings additional potentials for students. Thus, tutoring talented high school students through research projects in nuclear physics could enable students to understand key concepts and phases even in research projects, bringing new students to universities in STEM fields.

This paper presents the concept of tutoring talented high school students from preparation and design of simple but relevant experimental setups, theoretical analysis of concepts in nuclear physics, up to the use of experimental setups in simple, but relevant experiments in the environment. Two types of experimental setups have been designed, one build with everyday materials, and another build as low-cost spectrometer on information technology platform to measure ionising radiation in the environment, such as alpha- and beta-particles of various energies. The paper also includes the challenges that talented high school students went through and the way they overcome the challenges. In the preparation of the research activities with students we have used the Manual for optional teaching in physics and relevant research papers in nuclear physics for education purposes.

Keywords:

Talented students, tutoring, design of experimental setup, optional physics education.