A talk will be given by Dr. Duncan Brown of Syracuse University to kick off the Using Astronomy to Teach Physics Workshop. The talk is entitled "The New Astronomy of LIGO" and will be given in UNL's City Campus Student Union Auditorium on Wednesday, July 27 at 7:30 pm. LIGO is an instrument that is expected to make the first detection of gravitational waves — waves produced in the collision of black holes. The talk is appropriate for general audiences and is open to the public free of charge. A flyer promoting the event is available here.

The Using Astronomy to Teach Physics Workshop will be held on the UNL campus July 27-30. An impressive list of plenary speakers has recently been announced. The speakers, their institutions, and their topics include:

• Joseph Amato, Colgate (Teaching Physics with Astronomy)
• Roger Blandford, Stanford (Keynote Address)
• Duncan Brown, Syracuse (LIGO)
• Doug Caldwell, NASA (Kepler ExtraSolar Planets)
• David Helfand, Columbia (Chandra)
• Kara Hoffman, Maryland (IceCube)
• Ed Prather, Arizona (Pedagogical Strategies)
• Barbara Ryden, Ohio State (Observational Cosmology)
• Greg Snow, UNL (Pierre Auger Observatory)

More information can be found here.