CURE-ing in High School: Incorporating Original Research into a High School Physics Classroom

Course-embedded Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) have become popular methods of engaging students in research across smaller colleges in the USA. There is extensive scholarly literature on the benefits of research engagement within the college classroom. There is less literature on the implementation of this style of instruction in a high school setting. This talk will discuss how a CURE on the construction of a low-cost optical tweezing system was adapted from an upper-level college biophysics course for a high school Physics 2 class. Through this CURE, students worked to design and build a HeNe optical tweezer and custom inverted microscope with potential application in tweezing biomolecules, red blood cells, and observing Brownian motion. The students developed skills in grant writing, experimental design, and lasers. This is part of a larger initiative to give students access to a hands-on research experience through the high school's Young Researcher’s Program (YREP).