All the equipment, both experimental and demonstration sets, are used in teacher enhancement workshops, student apprenticeship and enrichment activities during the summer months. During the school year all of the equipment is loaned to the high school teachers who attended the teacher enhancement workshop. Through a van donated by the Army Corps of Engineers it is easy to transport resources to area high schools. The major goal of this program is to enhance and build on physics teachers' existing knowledge, skills and expertise in incorporating computers and other innovative tools in teaching physics. During the workshop regular high school physics curriculum subjects are covered utilizing Macintosh personal computers and the experimental and demonstration equipment available through the mobile unit system.
Considerable emphasis is put on teaching modern physics concepts.
Research instruments including a scanning tunneling microscope are used to demonstrate these concepts. Also a few days are spent during this workshop on the uses of Internet for education. In order to be eligible for this activity the teachers must be teaching physics regularly every year, seeing physics as their career specialty and eager to teach physics, have an interest in recent developments in physics and physics teaching, and willing to share information and ideas with other physics teachers. Our recent addition to the demonstration package, a scanning tunneling microscope will also be available to the teachers participating in this activity.