Abstract. We present results from the University of Colorado's Partnership for Informal Science Education in the Community (PISEC) in which university participants work in afterschool programs on inquiry-based activities with primary school children from populations typically under represented in science. This university-community partnership is designed to positively impact youth, university students, and the institutions that support them while improving children's attitudes towards and understanding of science. Children worked through circuit activities adapted from the Physics and Everyday Thinking (PET) curriculum and demonstrated increased understanding of content area as well as favorable beliefs about science.

The JILA Physics Frontier Center Partnerships for Informal Science Education in the Community (PISEC) provides informal afterschool inquiry-based science teaching opportunities for university participants with children typically underrepresented in science. We focus on the potential for this program to help increase children's interest in science, mathematics, and engineering and their understanding of the nature of science by validating the Children's Attitude Survey, which is based on the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey [1] and designed to measure shifts in children's attitudes about science and the nature of science. We present pre-and post-semester results for several semesters of the PISEC program, and demonstrate that, unlike most introductory physics courses in college, our afterschool informal science programs support and promote positive attitudes about science.

Abstract. We describe the University of Colorado Partnerships for Informal Science Education in the Community (PISEC) program in which university students participate in classroom and after school science activities with local precollege children. Across several different formal and informal educational environments, we use new technological tools, such as stop action motion (SAM) movies [1] to engage children so that they may develop an understanding of science through play and "show and tell". This approach provides a complementary avenue for reaching children who are otherwise underrepresented in science and under-supported in more formal educational settings. We present the model of university community partnership and demonstrate its utility in a case study involving an African American third grade student learning about velocity and acceleration.

Although relatively unaffected by rain and snow, free space infrared laser optical communication systems are affected by fog and atmospheric turbulence. We have calculated the signal loss from scintillation to predict bit error rates by varying the amount of scintillation, the link distance, and system details. Increasing the number of transmitters and the effective area was predicted to improve scintillation in earlier work in this field.' We found that increasing both the number of transmitters and the effective receiver area greatly improved the signal loss caused by scintillation and thus, the bit error rate. For example, under high scintillation (Cn2 = iO' m213), the four transmitter/receiver system at a link distance of 1 km should experience a bit error rate of better than iO'° for a 4.0 dB loss. Under the same conditions, an identical system with only one transmitter and receiver should experience a bit error rate of 1015 (0032 bits per second) for the same 4.0 dB loss. Increasing just the number of transmitters or the number of receivers improved the signal, but increasing both improved the signal even more than expected. In general, single beam systems should be limited to link distances less than about 600 m.