2021 KSU QuarkNet Annual Report
Kansas State University QuarkNet Center, 2020-2021 Annual Report
The K-State group held a three-day workshop and a Master Class (and Master Class Orientation) in the last fiscal year.
In addition, we are also coordinating a research project with QuarkNet Fellow Martin Shaffer that involves our dozen CRMD teachers working with their students to correlate muon rates with atmospheric temperature and pressure changes (available from NASA) as weather fronts move through Kansas and Arkansas.
The Master Class Orientation was held on March 13, 2021 and was attended by 9 teachers.
The virtual Master Class was held on April 23, 2021 and was attended by 8 teachers and 250 or so students. KSU Physics hosted a talk on HEP, CERN, CMS, and we also had a virtual talk from CERN.
A three-day workshop was held at KSU on August 2-4, 2021. This was attended by 5 teachers. The workshop was devoted to CMS activities and cosmic ray muon detectors and all teachers brought their detectors and took data and measured the speed of muons. The teachers plan to keep their cosmic ray detectors running in their schools. Martin Shaffer ran the CRMD activities and Shane Wood rand the CMS activities. Bret Flanders of KSU Physics presented on the physics of recorded sound and Talat Rahman of UCF discussed UCF high-school outreach.
On other fronts, KSU QuarkNet teachers continued to avail themselves of national QuarkNet and other HEP-related opportunities seeded by QuarkNet.
The KSU group remains strong in its eighteenth year of existence. Approximately two and half dozen teachers participate, a core group of a dozen or so regularly, and the rest at the rate of once every other meeting. We continue to specialize in serving small rural high schools throughout the state of Kansas and have now started to get some high school teachers from Kansas City, MO, as well as one from Arkansas. Plans for 2021-2022 include an hour-long Zoom meeting in Sep, Oct, Nov and Dec for CRMD teachers, an early spring 2022 Master Class orientation workshop, participation in a Master Class in late spring 2022 and a summer 2022 teacher workshop.
