Last week, WIPAC graduate student Rishabh Khandelwal shared his experiences living and working at the South Pole in an outreach talk for homeschool students. He explained the work he did on the Askaryan Radio Array (ARA) experiment while at the Pole. Rishabh was part of a team that deployed new detectors, which for ARA are big radio antennas that can detect tiny particles, called neutrinos, when they interact in the Antarctic ice.
The kids he spoke with looked at photos and videos and then got to try on actual South Pole gear! Eighteen boys and girls, ranging from 5 to 12 years old and full of energy and eager to learn, were part of the homeschool program at Aldo Leopold Nature Center in Madison, WI. This program consists of weekly sessions that encourage students to enhance their environmental knowledge.