Ames Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Ames, Iowa
Ames Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Ames, Iowa
Computational Science Helps Students Simulate Real-world Problems
Ames, Iowa -- The U. S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Ames Laboratory will host an Adventures in Supercomputing (AiS) Expo on Wednesday, April 24, in the Great Hall of the Memorial Union on the Iowa State University (ISU) campus. This is the fourth year the Lab has hosted the spring event, which gives students from 14 participating Iowa high schools the opportunity to showcase their talents in supercomputing programming.
"The AiS Program offers one example of how to integrate technology into classroom curriculums," says Barbara Helland, assistant program director for Ames Lab's Applied Mathematical Sciences Program, and AiS coordinator. "Over the past four years, teachers and coordinators in the AiS Program have developed a high school curriculum that cuts across the disciplines of mathematics, science and engineering and actively promotes the use of computers and technology as tools to simulate a variety of complex, real-world problems. The primary goal of AiS is to foster the participation of high school students in mathematics, science and computing," she adds.
Wednesday's AiS gathering will provide students and their teachers with an exciting forum to exchange innovative ideas and accomplishments. According to Helland, this year Iowa students will present projects on topics such as global climate, modeling the national debt, bridge construction and analysis, and the solar system.
Dr. Bruce Harmon, acting deputy director for Ames Laboratory, will get the AiS Expo activities off to a start with welcoming remarks to the students at 9 a.m. The event will be open to the public from 10:30 a.m. to noon and from 1:30 to 3 p.m.
Faculty and staff from Ames Lab, and the ISU departments of Agronomy, Physics and Chemistry, and the College of Engineering will judge student projects throughout the morning.
A highlight of the Expo will be a special panel discussion from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. on the construction of a full-scale replica of the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC). The ABC, the world's first electronic digital computer, was built on the ISU campus by professor John Atanasoff and his graduate student Clifford Berry in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
The AiS Expo awards ceremony is scheduled from 2:30 to 3 p.m. Trophies will go to the top two student teams who will represent Iowa at the DOE's National AiS Expo in Washington, D.C., in June.
Ames Laboratory is operated for the DOE by ISU. The Lab conducts research into various areas of national concern, including energy resources, high-performance computing, environmental cleanup and restoration, and synthesis and study of new materials.
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