Bringing Gravitational Waves into the Classroom: Science Outreach at the LIGO Livingston Science Education Center

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detector in Livingston, Louisiana has a dedicated facility for Science Education and Outreach, consisting of a fully equipped auditorium, a classroom, and an exhibit hall with around 50 interactive science exhibits. The center focuses on bringing LIGO science and cutting-edge astrophysics research into classrooms, and use it to engage K-12 students while teaching basic physics concepts. It also trains undergraduate STEM students from the Southern University in Baton Rouge, an HBCU, to be docents for school visits and public outreach events at LIGO, putting under-represented minorities in STEM at the forefront in giving science exposure to the next generation. I served as a LIGO outreach fellow here in Spring '22 and participated in various virtual as well as in-person tours and outreach events. This poster will present my experiences there, information about how big experiments/collaborations such as LIGO can engage local communities, and a new web-based tool I developed to teach the physics of oscillations and waves using LIGO gravitational-wave data.