This summer, two teams of Bakersfield College students ventured to Montana to participate in the National Student Solar Spectrograph Competition at Montana State University. This competition pitted teams from around the country in a battle to build a ground-based solar spectrograph. Check out my first post on this project on April 18th at
What’s a solar spectrograph? Bakersfield College astronomy professor Nick Strobel explained the project on his website.
Teams design, build, and test optical instruments to answer questions about the Sun or use sunlight to investigate some science question about the earth. The real goal is to train future scientists to solve problems as a team.
Nick also explained the project and each of Bakersfield College’s team efforts to build a solar spectrograph in an article for The Bakersfield Californian. Following the competition, Nick said it was a great learning and growing experience for all the students.
Team Mass Effect present their results at the “Science Results Talks” session on day 3 of the NSSSC. Left to right: Alfredo Arevalo, Joanna Moraza, Andres Leyva, and Marco Guerra.
Bakersfield College’s teams were up against students from around the country, and students with upper-level engineering and physics backgrounds from major universities. Despite the competition challenge, Team Mass Effect received the “Inspire Award” for their determination to overcome obstacles and proceed with their project.
Photos from the National Student Solar Spectrograph Competition are on Nick’s Flickr account for all to see!
Tagged: Engineering, Nick Strobel, physics, science, spectrograph, students
The headline says student project wins an award. What did they win?
Here is the link:
http://tinyurl.com/obfyvyl
Here is an excerpt from the story:
Inspire Award – “Mass Effect” team from Bakersfield College. Team members were Alfredo Arevalo, Joanna Moraza, Andres Leyva, and Marco Guerra, all from Bakersfield, Calif. Team adviser was Dan Kimball.