SUBMITTED AS A DOCTORAL DISSERTATION IN COMPLETION OF REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF ED.D THROUGH WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY. The overall purpose of this action research study was to explore the experiences of ten middle school science teachers involved in a three-year partnership program between scientists and teachers at a Department of Energy national laboratory, including the impact of the program on their professional development, and to improve the partnership program by developing a set of recommendations based on the study’s findings. This action research study relied on qualitative data including field notes recorded at the summer academies and data from two focus groups with teachers and scientists. Additionally, the participating teachers submitted written reflections in science notebooks, participated in open-ended telephone interviews that were transcribed verbatim, and wrote journal summaries to the Department of Energy at the end of the summer academy. The analysis of the data, collaboratively examined by the teachers, the scientists, and the science education specialist acting as co-researchers on the project, revealed five elements critical to the success of the professional development of science teachers. First, scientist-teacher partnerships are a unique contribution to the professional development of teachers of science that is not replicated in other …

The objective of this work is to investigate the thick diffusion limit of various spatial discretizations of the one-dimensional, steady-state, monoenergetic, discrete ordinates neutron transport equation. This work specifically addresses the two lowest order nodal methods, AHOT-N0 and AHOT-N1, as well as reconsiders the asymptotic limit of the Diamond Difference method. The asymptotic analyses of the AHOT-N0 and AHOT-N1 nodal methods show that AHOT-N0 does not possess the thick diffusion limit for cell edge or cell average fluxes except under very limiting conditions, which is to be expected considering the AHOT-N0 method limits to the Step method in the thick diffusion limit. The AHOT-N1 method, which uses a linear in-cell representation of the flux, was shown to possess the thick diffusion limit for both cell average and cell edge fluxes. The thick diffusion limit of the DD method, including the boundary conditions, was derived entirely in terms of cell average scalar fluxes. It was shown that, for vacuum boundaries, only when {sigma}{sub t}, h, and Q are constant and {sigma}{sub a} = 0 is the asymptotic limit of the DD method close to the finite-differenced diffusion equation in the system interior, and that the boundary conditions between the systems will …

The elastic scattering of C/sup 12/ ions from Ar, Fe, Ni, Ag/sup 107/ In, and Ta was measured as a function of angle, at a laboratory-system energy of 124.5 Mev with the Berkeley heavy-ion linear accelerator. The experimental equipment and techniques are discussed. The angular distributions show the same general behavior as previous heavy-ion elastic scattering experiments. The experimental data were analyzed with the semiclassical Blair model as modified by McIntyre. Very good agreement with experiment was obtained. The measurements were taken with 1% statistics in order to study the structure of the angular distributions in greater detail, because only by fitting the details in the structure was it possible to obtdin unambiguous sets of parameters. The parameters indicated a nuclear radius of 1.45A/sup 1/3/ x 10/sup -13/ cm, and a nearly constant surface thick ness of 1.6 x 10/sup -13/ cm. Total reaction cross sections were obtained. A rainbow-model analysis by Goldman of the data is given. Existing alpha - and heavy-ion scattering data were analyzed with the McIntyre model and compared with previous optical-model analyses of the same data. It was found that, by independent analysis, the two models give the same imaginary phase shifts for all partial …