Physics establish a remotely controlled laboratory

Two remotely controlled laboratory experiments were created for the Atomic and Nuclear Physics course to provide a simulation environment for students studying via distance.

This is a first for the Physics discipline at the University of Newcastle who were faced with the challenge of providing undergraduate students with remotely controlled Physics laboratory experiments as part of the Innovative Research Universities (IRU) network.

Currently, hundreds of distance education programs can be found on the Internet but are generally in the areas where the teaching components include lectures and tutorials. Programs for degrees which include subjects with a compulsory experimental laboratory component are few, creating a critical gap in distance learning education.

While remote labs and simulations cannot replace working in a practical environment, this online option allows students to control a real experimental apparatus via the internet and this provides the best solution to complete a Physics subject in distance mode.

Recently the Australian Physics Journal published the discipline’s report about this experiment, ‘Distance Learning laboratory: a remote Atomic and Nuclear Physics experiment’ and stated it presented a new approach to distance learning.

Last year the Physics Technical Staff team including Michael Cvetanovski, Galiya Sharafutdinova and John Foster received the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Professional Staff Excellence for this achievement.

The work to develop future remote experiments is in progress.