Vista Unified School District

Sounds fascinating, right?  Several physics students from Mission Vista High School thought so and recently attended two weekend workshops with theoretical physicist Dr. Tarun Grover.  Working in the Physics department at UC San Diego, Dr. Grover was awarded funding from the National Science Foundation to expose high school students to a career in Quantum Condensed Matter Physics, a branch of physics that studies systems of very large numbers of particles in a condensed state, like solids or liquids.  Lucky for me, I had a chance to stay with our students during the workshops and was able to see their excitement and hear their very inquisitive, challenging, and academically-minded questions; kudos to our students who served us proudly.  Ultimately though, these workshops provided our students an opportunity to participate in informal discussions and the exchange of information with a widely published physics researcher in an effort to understand the promise and challenges of a career in this emerging field.