Experimental Investigation of the Light Transmission Method for Measuring Black Carbon Aerosol Mass. JEFFERY AGUIAR (University of the Pacific Stockton, CA 95211) THOMAS KIRCHSTETTER (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkley, CA, 94720)

Black carbon (BC) is a product of incomplete combustion and is strongly light absorbing. Carbonaceous aerosols perturb the earth's energy balance with space thereby introducing global and regional climate changes. There is significant uncertainty associated with atmospheric aerosol research due to the differing experimental methods and instruments that exist to measure aerosol mass and optical properties. Using thermal and optical techniques, the group studied the evolution of organic and black carbon from sampled quartz filters was studied. In this study, a dual sampling routine was used to monitor the reported BC concentrations both from a stable BC-emitting source and in a Caldecott Tunnel vehicular emissions survey. The dual sampling setup consisted of using both an aethalometer and filter based technique. After the data sets were collected and compared, the uncertainty associated with measuring carbonaceous aerosols was observed. A data correction based on a varying sigma value as function of transmission was implemented to the aethalometer data to illustrate the same observed trend seen in the filter samples. In order to calculate an accurate BC concentration, a varying sigma value must be assumed to account for the non-linearities associated with filter-based sampling artifact.

Growing and Learning Community Combing Lesson Study with Math in the Garden. STEPHANIE BIRCH (California State Domiguez Hills Carson, CA 90747) ALAN GOULD (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkley, CA, 94720)

The Growing and Learning Community (GLC) is an institute designed to encourage teachers to implement lesson study at their host schools while developing school garden which can be used to teach Math lessons. Lesson study is the main process of teacher development in Japan. Instead of spending a majority of their time focusing on curriculum development teachers involved involved with lesson study use their time to focus on the success of a lesson by gathering students observations and data. GLC is combing lesson study with Math in the garden by educating teachers on the lesson study cycle by using Math in the garden lessons as an example lesson study. Lesson study consist of a school goal, selecting a lesson to study, observation of the students during the lesson, debriefing and modification session, teaching the lesson a second time with the suggested modification, collecting more observations of students and final debriefing session. Through this lesson study process teaching gain a better understanding of how the students learning process. Teachers also gain a support network among other teachers and learn about alternative teaching techniques. Lesson study is a new method of teacher development in the United States which can bring a new focus to teaching by putting the attention on students instead of standards.

Intensive Research Institute-Cosmic Ray Detector. MARLENA GUTIERREZ (Reedley College Reedley, CA 93654) TOM KNIGHT (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkley, CA, 94720)

This summer I, along with the Intensive Research Institute, worked in four different workshops. The workshop I will be discussing is that of the Cosmic Ray Detector. Our main focus was where do cosmic rays come from, the earth or the atmosphere. To answer this question we built a cosmic ray detector. This detector would enable us to conduct experiments in an attempt to answer this question. To increase the efficiency of the detector we constructed an entirely new frame for the detector. Our frame was an octagon shape. This allowed for two more detection angles, 30 and 60 . To test our detector we took it to Mount Diablo and Caldecott Tunnel. We concluded from our tests at Mount Diablo, as elevation increases so do the number of counts detected. At the Caldecott Tunnel we found that earth and man made substances act as a barrier for the cosmic rays, decreasing the number of counts detected. Therefore, our experiment concluded that cosmic rays come from the atmosphere, not the earth.