As part of the Florida High Tech Corridor Council’s (FHTCC) techPATH initiative to promote high tech careers to middle and high school students, the University of Florida (UF) will host a special program showing Alachua County middle school students the science behind major forces of nature, all while exploring the high tech field of simulation.
The May 12, 2009, Math & Physics Day will introduce 30 local middle school students to the value of science and math through physics experiments, presentations from academic experts and a fun, hands-on session with the world’s largest portable hurricane wind and rain simulator at UF.
“Math & Physics Day is an exciting way to share information about a range of technical career fields to which many of the students might never be exposed,” said Dr. Jeff Bindell, director of the FHTCC techPATH Educational Consortium and lecturer in physics at the University of Central Florida (UCF). “This program is intended to ‘light the spark’ to get kids thinking about how math and physics could help them in their future careers.”
In addition to interactive lessons, Math & Physics Day will demonstrate the diverse opportunities for careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields, showing students the education it takes to secure fun, high tech jobs in many diverse industries.
This program is the first Math & Physics Day to be held outside of Orange County. Dr. Alan Dorsey, chairman of UF’s Physics Department, will be assisting techPATH to tailor its model program for Alachua County students. Math & Physics Day at UCF, which has been delivered 10 times to 300 students in the nearly two-year lifetime of the program, usually collaborates with Orlando-based modeling, simulation and training companies to show students different aspects of the high tech field including military, medical and flight simulation applications. The Florida High Tech Corridor Council’s techPATH initiative is working to make this program available to all school districts in the 23-county region.
