Forging a Cosmic Connection Between Students and Science

摘要

Twelfth-grader Treasure Sheppard has aspired to become an aerospace engineer since she was 7 years old. But nothing fired the bright and bubbly 17-year-old's passion for science and technology quite like a weeklong visit to the California institute ofTechnology (Caltech) in Pasadena, where she and a classmate assembled a detector to snare cosmic rays-subatomic particles zooming in from space. "I was expecting a few lectures" from Caltech physicists, says Sheppard, who attends nearby South Pasadena High School. "But when we got there, they handed us a piece of paper and said, 'These are the instructions.' They had confidence that we could complete the task."