Speaker
Description
(1) JAEA nuclear chart
JAEA has published a paper-based nuclear chart which is a sheet of 12 or 16 pages in A4 size, every four years since 1976. The chart is a two-dimensional chart that shows the number of protons on the vertical axis and the number of neutrons on the horizontal axis in order to represent the properties of various nuclei, and we distribute them to (mainly) researchers on nuclear science.1)
(2) Three-dimensional nuclear chart and educational activities
Nuclear chart is very useful, however, such a character-based chart is not rather friendly to be used. We constructed three-dimensional (3D) nuclear charts created using toy blocks, which represent the atomic masses per nucleon number and the total half-lives as heights of blocks for each nucleus in the entire region of the nuclear mass to visualize them intuitively2) (Fig.). The size is 96 (width) x 56 (depth) x 30 (maximum height) cm. By using the atomic-mass chart, for example, generation of atomic energy from nuclei, like nuclear fusion and fission, can be understood as a slope of the masses. Subsequently, these charts were used in outreach activities for the general public and high school students. As an example, an application for a lecture on nucleosynthesis in stars is introduced, and some explanations for the abundance of iron and the origin of uranium and heavy elements on the Earth are given with the 3D chart.
Using our charts, lectures entitled 'Alchemy of the Universe' were delivered to various places (science café, science lecture in high school, etc.) more than twenty times till now. We made some video movies3).
(3) Crowdfunding for distributing nuclear chart to high school students in Japan
In 2020, we started a crowdfunding project “one nuclear chart for one high school."4) The purpose of the project is to deliver nuclear chart to high schools in Japan. The projected budget is 1.5 million Yen (~15,000 USD as 1USD=100Yen) and the term of donation is set from Jan. to Mar. in 2020 (8 weeks). Finally, it was succeeded: the total amount of the donation reached to 1.731 million Yen (~17,310 USD) by 157 supporters. After that, we constructed 1,200 sheets of the chart written in Japanese, and distributed to 284 science-programmed high-schools, namely super science high school (SSH) approved by the ministry for education, overall Japan, 122 high schools in Fukushima prefecture, 98 high schools in Ibaraki prefecture, and 57 colleges of national institute of technology.
In our paper, we will show our educational activities with nuclear chart in Japan, including an introduction of the 3D charts and a crowdfunding project, and some examples of outreach lectures for heigh-schools.
Figure: Three-dimensional nuclear chart. The height of the block represents atomic mass excess per nucleon. The color of the block represents the length of half-lives of nuclei.
References
1) H. Koura, T. Tachibana, J. Katakura, F. Minato, Chart of the nuclides 2014, Japanese Nuclear Data Committee and Nuclear Data Center of JAEA (2015).
https://www.jaea.go.jp/02/press2014/p15031202/ (in Japanese)
2) H. Koura, Three-dimensional nuclear chart - understanding nuclear physics and nucleosynthesis in stars, Phys. Educ. 49 (2014) 215: Three-minute video abstract can also be seen:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0031-9120/49/2/215
3) The promotion division of JAEA: (1) ‘Cosmic alchemy’ (2013), and (2) ‘Contributed to the Synthesis of New Element NIHONIUM - The World of Heavy Element Nuclear Science’ (2017), in the series of the JAEA official movie ‘JAEA Channel’
http://www.jaea.go.jp/english/jaea_channel/
4) A crowdfunding project “one nuclear chart for one high school” since 2020
https://academist-cf.com/projects/169?lang=ja (in Japanese)