Ian C Whittaker
Department of Physics and Mathematics, Nottingham Trent University, Clifton Campus, Nottingham, NG11 8NS UK
Tom Vetternburg, Karen Meyer
School of Science and Engineering, University of Dundee, Dundee, DD1 4HN, Scotland, UK
Building an auroral simulator as part of an undergraduate final year project, how the idea was developed and the impact of sharing it with colleagues in Dundee.
Are you teaching undergraduate final year project students about a ‘realistic’ design and build process? Maybe you want to ensure students have experience of working to specific timescales, budgets, and negotiating technician time. If this sounds daunting then you are not alone; we have used a visually appealing piece of outreach kit (a planeterella) to achieve this outcome by relying on the concept of student co-creation.
The planeterella is an auroral simulator, useful as both a teaching tool and an outreach instrument. So why does every university not have one if it is so useful? There are three major factors involved in building this instrument that make it ideal for challenging students creativity and physics application.
1: Only a small percentage of people have actually heard of a planeterella. The lack of awareness of the instrument and its history means it is unlikely to be thought about at project level. Of course this adds an element of novelty to the students view increasing enthusiasm in ensuring it is completed.
2: This is an expensive piece of kit, getting an example instrument for a student to learn from is very difficult. The instruments built in the UK already have cost roughly £10-15k, while they can be purchased for around 20k Euros. This is well outside an undergraduate project budget but allows students to look at how using sustainable methods (i.e. recycling material, borrowing pieces of equipment, rescuing offcuts) can, and should, be used in project builds.
3: Finally the planeterella has the potential to be quite dangerous. This point will concern health & safety and administration alike but immediately excite students (until they realise they are expected to write their own risk assessments!)
So where do we start? The concept of simulating the solar wind current flow towards the Earth is relatively straightforward. We do this by setting up a non-belt driven van de Graaf generator in a rarefied pressure chamber and put a magnet in one of the spheres. Of course at this point we highlight that we need roughly 500V and a magnet strong enough to alter the timing of pacemakers for this instrument to work.
While the preparation for this project was more work than usual the student co-creation aspect made the term time work and supervision easier. The student built resilience during the trial and error aspect of the build, learnt to negotiate borrowing equipment (including rescuing items destined for the bin), and built a portfolio of risk assessment drafts and signed off versions. All vital soft skills that employers value (Davenport 2022). Supervision of this project was done in the same way as other projects in that it is a group supervisory meeting where other students provide progress reports to each other each week. In this way the student has the problem solving assistance of their supervisor and peers as well.
Of course this could be considered a risk with slightly more responsibility on the student than most other projects. Yet we have a working instrument, using mostly borrowed and recycled material, for the total sum of £74 (just within a project budget). The student is also co-author, with the supervisor and lead technician, on a RAS Techniques and Instruments paper (Whittaker, Elkan, and Toms, 2025). The student gained a first class mark for their project and has demonstrated the equipment several times, satisfying a common physics undergraduate degree criterion of being able to present to a variety of audiences.
The instrument has not been dismantled and continues to be demonstrated at open days, internal NTU events, undergraduate lectures, science fairs, schools, and invited talks. With the journal article, webpage (NTU planeterella 2024), public science article, and demonstrations; the reach is currently around 18k people.
One of the recent talks has been funded by the Scottish branch of the Institute of Physics to the Dundee Science Centre, as seen in Figure 2. As an addition to the trip, a seminar was also given at the university campus to undergraduates and staff to discuss the importance of student co-creation and the instrument build. IW has been advising colleagues and a team of technicians at the University of Dundee about how to affordably construct their own planeterella. We hope to have it assembled and on show at local outreach events in the near future! The guidance given has been on MS Teams and now in person, mostly focusing on the safety aspects and approaching tasks such as ensuring low strain on the vacuum tubes, and appropriate use of 3D printing solutions.
The talk looks at the aurora, solar activity, the history of the planeterella, and how supervision of the construction of NTU’s own planeterella went ahead. The talk was well received by the audience, who asked many insightful questions about the physics involved.
The history of the instrument, and its inventor Kristian Birkeland, makes for a fascinating talk to students, the public, and academics. The planeterella is currently touring a number of locations in the east midlands, and more nationally to discuss implementing student co-creation. If you would like a talk on the planeterella, final year project scholarship, or are adventurous enough to want to build your own instrument on a budget then please feel free to reach out for help.
References:
Davenport, C. (2022). 16 Key skills and attributes for a successful career in physics, Education and Outreach, Physics World, IOP publishing https://physicsworld.com/a/16-key-skills-and-attributes-for-a-successful-career-in-physics/
NTU Planeterella website, (2024). Accessed 03 February 2025 https://www.ntu.ac.uk/study-and-courses/courses/our-schools/science-and-technology-engineering/ntu-planeterella
Whittaker, I. C., Elkan, E., Toms, R. (2025). Building a low budget planeterella for auroral outreach incorporating physics student co-creation principles, RAS Techniques and Instruments, Volume 4, rzae066, https://doi.org/10.1093/rasti/rzae066