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Posted on: 10/14/2009 12:00:00 AM... High school students from anywhere in the world can now perform real-time experiments in a microelectronics device characterization lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) without leaving their home classroom. Through iLabCentral, a new initiative funded by the National Science Foundation, students access an array of sophisticated scientific facilities through the Internet and complete experiments yielding actual scientific data via a webcam and remote controls. While iLabs are currently being used by large research institutions and universities as a way to share expensive scientific equipment, this marks the first effort at making these remote labs accessible to high schools.

In addition to the microelectronics device characterization lab, students can also work with a dynamic signal analyzer, an educational laboratory virtual instrumentation suite, a polymer crystallization experiment, a shake table, a heat exchanger, a force on a dipole lab, and neutron spectroscopy labs, all based at MIT. The University of Queensland in Australia has also contributed an inverted pendulum and radioactivity lab, and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, is planning on making some devices available before the close of the year.

A pilot program integrating iLabCentral with regular high school curricula was launched this fall with 23 high school teachers from across the United States.

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• Launch iLabCentral

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