Summer Girls Program 2009
The Physics Frontier Center at JQI supports Summer Girls, an intensive, hands-on program that brings 9th- and 11th-grade girls to the University of Maryland's Department of Physics for two weeks of instruction, exploration and experiment. Since its inception, approximately 1,000 rising ninth graders have attended this program. Past participants have gone on to become engineers, doctors, computer specialists and, of course, physicists. Summer Girls have come from Maryland, Virginia and Washington DC as well as Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New Hampshire and foreign countries. The program is free to selected students who share a keen desire to learn more about physics. This year, the program drew a total of 68 students over the course of four weeks.

9th Grade Program

In 1990, two UMD faculty members became concerned that there were few, if any, programs available to interest girls in physics. They applied to the National Science Foundation for funding and from there, the Physics Department Summer Girls Outreach Program was created. The program started with one two-week program session and has grown to two two-week, sessions. The program runs daily from 8:30 AM to 4 PM. In the mornings, attendees listen to lectures, participate in demos, write in journals and complete hands-on experiments from a lab manual. At the end of the two-week program, parents, teachers and siblings are invited to a closing ceremony where Summer Girls present their favorite demonstrations.

11th Grade Program

Owing to increased popularity and demand for the Summer Outreach Program for rising 9th-grade girls, the program has been extended to rising 11th-grade girls. While the 9th-grade program focuses on traditional physics, the 11th-grade program jumps into the world of modern physics. The program runs daily from 9 AM to 3 PM. In the mornings, girls are introduced to the exciting world of modern physics. They will learn about Relativity, Antimatter, Quantum Mechanics, Physical Uncertainty, Quantum Computing and more. The afternoons are filled with hands-on lab activities, visits to labs working on modern physics, discussions with professors currently doing work in modern physics, and a project designed to make discussions of modern topics tangible. Students are introduced to topics that they will likely not be offered in their high school classes, from the thought experiments of Einstein to current applications in code-breaking.