TRIUMF Day 5 - Until we meet again...

 Today, I'm back on a plane for Calgary to meet up with my wife and kids. It's been a great time this week and I can't help but think of what a week-long international high school teacher program, like the ones at CERN, Perimeter Institute, and LIGO, might look like here. It could be an annual event in the summer during Science Week so that teachers could experience different talks from researchers and hear what's coming in TRIUMF's latest work.

Day 1 - AM: Safety and Harassment Training (so that teachers have access to all public areas of the site)

PM: Tour and overview of TRIUMF (walk around the facility, no deep dives yet, and hear what is done in each area and examples of the research currently going on)

Day 2 - AM: Medical Radionuclides (Dr. Valery Radchenko was amazing and speaks passionately and in a way that even someone without any background can understand - hearing him discuss his work at TRIUMF would be a must have for a week like this - it would be great if TRIUMF were to develop an educational resource around this specific to the work done here, possibly adapted from the Nuclear Physics Masterclass)

PM: Proton Therapy (Dr. Connie Hoehr was also wonderful to speak to and her work in this area gives hope for cancer treatment in the future - again a TRIUMF specific resource adapted from the Nuclear Physics Masterclass would be a great supplement to run teachers through)

Day 3 - AM: Binding Blocks (teachers are taken through a couple modules, likely 1 and 5, of the Binding Blocks program and run through a round of the Hot CNO Cycle game - it would be amazing if Dr. Christian Diget were here to be able to administer this session)

PM: Accelerator Physics (a run through of basic accelerator physics and how different components of the accelerator do their jobs - Philip Freeman created a series of lessons around TRIUMF's cyclotron a few years ago that could easily be updated and give teachers another resource to take back to their classrooms)

Day 4 - AM: CMMS Deep Dive (Dr. Iain McKenzie was also such a great person to talk with and I couldn't imagine someone better to talk to about this - a TRIUMF specific resource on how they use electromagnetic fields to filter out particles so they only allow those with a certain momentum to pass would be a great classroom resource that connects to what he does here)

PM: Data Analysis (some sort of session on how they analyze data here at TRIUMF to produce the graphs that I've so often seen during Science Week sessions where teachers get to take some raw data and use Python to produce their own graphs)

Day 5 - AM: Dark Matter (a session on dark matter research done at TRIUMF would be fascinating to hear more about - this is one that I wish I had more time to learn about during my time here)

PM: (Optional) trip to Stanley Park and then some swanky Vancouver restaurant for supper

Sprinkle in a couple of opportunities for teachers to attend Science Week sessions that are not going to be over the heads of people that don't have a graduate degree in Physics (I've been to sessions where this has been the case and nothing is more frustrating or feels like a waste of time to high school teachers) and a couple of social events in the evenings and voila! A beautiful one-week international high school teacher outreach program at TRIUMF that could tell the world about the work being done here! This opportunity should also be heavily promoted to chemistry teachers due to the focus of chemistry applications, but also the lack of programs like this for chemistry teachers around the world.

Anyways, today I spent some time touring myself around the facilities one last time and then went on the ARIEL guided tour.

The ARIEL tour was the final piece of this year's Science Week and open to anyone that signed up. We got to see the CANREB facility, underground where they deal with radioactive materials, and Electron Hall, home of the new ARIEL e-Linac. Again, another fascinating tour that shows how TRIUMF is continuously upgrading and innovating to further scientific research.

Then, it was time for one final farewell to this remarkable facility on Canada's west coast! I loved my time here and only wish I could have had the opportunity to speak to even more of the researchers. I feel that I've learned so much and have a lot to take back to the classroom. A few years ago, Philip Freeman, created some great TRIUMF classroom resources for high schools, but they've sadly been removed from TRIUMF's site. I hope to take these, combine them with some aspects of resources from CERN and Perimeter Institute and bring them to life in my grade 12 Physics this year. I also hope to create a couple of resources, loosely based on the simulations from the Nuclear Physics Masterclass earlier in the week, based on developing radionuclides for use in cancer treatment and using hadron therapy to cure tumorous forms of cancer. I believe that a couple resources like this could really impact students and show them what is possible with a good understanding of physics!