2022-2023 Annual Report from UCSC/SCIPP QuarkNet Center

In 2022-2023 we continued our outreach programs to regional high schools in central California. The QuarkNet Center programs were coordinated by faculty mentor Jason Nielsen and SCIPP Outreach Coordinator Laura Bakken, assisted by undergraduate intern Natalie Hultgren.

The annual Particle Physics Masterclass resumed after a hiatus during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Masterclass was held at SCIPP on Saturday, March 4, 2023. We had a record 61 students registered for the Masterclass, with nearly all attending in person. Students followed introductory particle physics lectures from theorists and experimentalists before using Hypatia to search for lepton and photon pairs. Students attending in person participated in a lab tour and cloud chamber demonstration with researchers. The class ended with a videoconference with Fermilab. The outstanding student response was the result of widespread outreach to local high schools, an approach we plan to use again next year.

As a follow-up with a Masterclass teacher, we visited the Physics IB class at Scotts Valley High on May 22, 2023. A small group of graduate students, undergraduates, and faculty discussed particle physics and led the BAMA activity in the classroom. This activity went very well, and we are planning to expand the visits to more schools in 2023-2024.

We started some planning for other activities, such as a hands-on electronics activity and an astroparticle data analysis activity, but these are still in the early stages of development. We would be interested in learning about existing programs in QuarkNet.