Nuclear Weapon Education Research

In the 2024 Los Angeles County Science and Engineering Fair, Teens4Disarmament won the competitive Behavioral Science category!

Here is our abstract for the experiment: The world collectively has approximately 12,500 nuclear weapons, all far more destructive than those that killed hundreds of thousands of people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945. The detonation of even a small number of these weapons could have catastrophic human and environmental consequences that could gravely threaten human civilization. The United Nations recognizes the importance of youth education in the context of nuclear weapons. The United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs stated “Youth can play a decisive role in how their societies and governments view nuclear weapons when they are educated, engaged, and empowered.” Our objective was to find the correlation between nuclear weapon education and literacy in high school students, which was conducted through a randomized control trial. 100 high school students were randomly assigned to two equal groups (50 subjects each), one with nuclear weapon education (exposure), and one without education (control). All 100 subjects took the quizzes initially. The exposure group was lectured on science, history, and effects of nuclear weapons one week later. Another week later, all 100 subjects re-took the quiz. The differences between the two quizzes were analyzed in terms of the percentage of the responses. The study’s results demonstrated statistically significant differences in scores on the tests between the two groups. The exposure group improved by 61%, while the control group changed by 7%. T-test P-value: <0.05. Therefore, this study proved our hypothesis that nuclear weapon education for high school students provided positive effects on their nuclear weapon literacy. Through this experiment, Teens4Disarmament was able to communicate with many teenagers in our area and spread awareness about nuclear weapons and their existential threat to humanity. With each step at a time, Teens4Disarmament strives to encourage and engage more youth in this dire issue and eventually take the steps to build a world free of nuclear weapons.