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	Podcast:		UC Science Today
	Episode:		Engaging students in science through lessons in radiation
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:04
	Publish Date:		2016-07-25 19:00:00
	Description:		Wherever you are in the world, you receive a daily dose of radiation from the natural environment. That may sound intimidating if you’re unfamiliar with the concept of background radioactivity. So to make the subject more tangible for the public, nuclear physicist Kai Vetter and his team at the University of California, Berkeley developed the DoseNet program, which uses a network of radiation sensors distributed to schools around the world. The DoseNet website displays real time measurements from these sensors that double as educational tools in the classroom. "Because it turns out, with nuclear radiation, even those we can’t sense it, it’s very easy to measure. Each of these sensor packages not only have the silicon sensor, which senses nuclear radiation, but it has a little computer on that to process the data and make the data ultimately available through our network." DoseNet’s goal is to engage students in science and engineering through lessons on radiation. In fact, students can even analyze data and practice programming on these sensors, which Vetter hopes will someday form a sustainable, global network to monitor radiation.
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