Teachers: help your kids detect cosmic rays

One thing I like to see is kids getting their hands on doing science. There's something about being involved with something, actually doing it for yourself, that gives you a sense of ownership over the knowledge, makes you part of something bigger.

Here's another chance to do that for students across the world: the ERGO telescope project. ERGO stands for "Energetic Ray Global Observatory" and the idea is to build simple cosmic-ray detectors that can be sent to classrooms all over the world. Here's a short video describing the project:

Cosmic rays are energetic subatomic particles that come blasting in from space. They're created by the Sun, by exploding stars, but distant galaxies... basically, by cool, interesting objects. By distributing these detectors across the world, students can share their data and come up with their own ways of examining them.

If you're a teacher and you want your students to not just learn science, but to experience it, then this sounds like a good way to do it! They even have a simple form you can fill out to apply for a grant to get started.