2014 Annual Report - UCR

The main activity of the University of California at Riverside QuarkNet center in 2014 was its particiaption in International Masterclasses. Approximately 30 students participated: 12 from San Jacinto  High School and 18 from Riverside Preparatory Academy.  UCR participated in the ATLAS Z measurement.  As usual, mentor Bill Gary and his colleagues were careful to teach the students to accept all lepton candidate events irrespective of whether they thought the dilepton system formed a good Z boson candidate or not. As a result. they successfully also found the J/Ψ and Upsilon mesons, as well as the simulated Z-prime resonance the ATLAS masterclass developers added in at ~1000 GeV. Also as usual, UCR had a CERN-moderated videoconference in spite of the tme difference. It was again a great success, as the students really enjoyed interacting with their peer high school students in Europe.