Greetings All, I am working with the HPS and a number of people who are getting booths together to form a section of 4 facing each other at the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington DC April 6-8 (April 6 is the sneak peek and career fair). Our goal is to have 4 booths related to Health Physics that would have hands on displays and people who could relate the field of health physics to the attendees.
We have 2.5 of the 4 booths we would like to have funded and would be interested in having some other groups or companies join us. Right now we have CHP Consultants funding a booth, AIRRS is a second booth, and the Medical HPS Section agreed to fund ½ booth. The DC Chapter of the HPS will likely send some people to staff the booths but we can use lots of help (so we can also go out and enjoy the festival!!). If your employer or local Health Physics society chapter would like to participate, let us know. We have some student chapters who have gone in the past that could use some funding (couldn't we all..). We have arranged with the festival organizers to put 4 booths facing each other in a small section all in the same place. Kind of like a themed section. At my booth, I had some salt substitute and some coleman lantern mantles and discussed radioactivity and relative numbers. I wrote out Avogadro's number and would ask people if they knew what it was and then compared a grain of sand to that number to illustrate the relative aspect of radiation protection. I would point out how many atoms of K-40 were in their body. The other thing I did was have a pancake probe and a display with some coleman lantern mantles under it and have people "find the source" to demonstrate how the meters work and why you have to carefully measure things. I hope to bring a cloud chamber to the event this time. I was thinking that counting air samples would also be interesting. The festival itself is truly a spectacle as the entire DC Convention center (which is huge) is filled with 10X10 booths with STEM displays. Everything from Robotics to Space Missions, flight simulators, insects, presentations by notable scientists, all kinds of things. There are over 350,000 attendees to this free event. It is a great way to get the word out about health physics. There is even a career fair event Friday night. Even if you don't want to sponsor a booth, you could fund part of one, or even come out and staff the event. I have brought my kids to all the events and they LOVED it. More details about the event can be found on their website: https://usasciencefestival.org/ I encourage all of you to consider going to the festival. It is truly spectacular. Feel free to contact me if you are interested and I will get you in touch with the team of people working on this. Yours, Rob Robert J. Gunter, MSc, CHP CHP Consultants/CHP Dosimetry P.O. Box 4126 Oak Ridge, TN 37831 www.chpconsultants.com<http://www.chpconsultants.com/> - Consulting and Nuclear Instrumentation www.chpdosimetry.com<http://www.chpdosimetry.com/> - Radiation Dosimetry Services https://counts.pro/ - Transform you radiation meter to a mobile laboratory Toll Free: (888) 766-4833 Fax: (866) 491-9913 Cel: (865) 387-0028 [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [facebook]<https://www.facebook.com/search/str/CHP+Dosimetry/keywords_top> [Linkedin] <https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-gunter-60466122?trk=hp-identity-name>
