Coding Camp 2021

What: QuarkNet Coding Camp
When: 21-25 June or 28 June - 2 July
Where: remote over Zoom
Cost: none! Actually, we pay you.
Application Deadline: Sunday, June 6 @ 5:00 PM EDT (local time here)

QuarkNet Teachers,

We’re now taking applications for the 2021 QuarkNet Coding Camp. It’s a one-week remote workshop for teachers where you'll learn to code in Python, analyze particle physics data, and practice integrating that into your own curriculum with reformed pedagogy. Along the way, you'll pick up strategies for promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion through your curriculum. We'll meet via Zoom Mon-Fri for a week (approximately 3hrs AM, 2hrs break, 3hrs PM). Whether you’re a beginner or well-practiced at coding or particle physics, there’s a place for you here. We’ll offer two one-week sessions Monday, June 21 - Friday, June 25 and Monday, June 28 - Friday, July 2.

What’s in it for you?

  • We will be providing the usual $500 stipend for the week.
  • We also provide a small equipment budget up to $250 per teacher, for technical supplies (e.g., to buy or upgrade your laptop, modem, headphones). You’ll need to submit receipts.
  • You can earn graduate credit for this workshop.
  • Five days of amazing speakers, professional development aligned with reformed pedagogy, and paid time to work with wonderful teachers from around the country.

What do you need?

  • A reliable internet connection that can handle video calling.
  • A Google account that is unconnected to your work email.
  • Free time during the day: we built in some flexibility, but plan to be free during the synchronous work time.
  • A desktop or laptop computer that can handle video calls and several browser tabs open.
  • A willingness to work remotely in a team on a challenging task

What will you do?

  • Become familiar with Jupyter notebooks, and practice writing code to perform simple tasks and analyses. Try out the example here … it’ll help you decide if you’ll find it interesting and doable.
  • Develop your coding skills, and apply them by analyzing real data from the CMS experiment.
  • Extend these skills and tools to new datasets and areas of physics.
  • Design investigations and activities to be used with your students in the classroom, and develop a plan for implementation.

I’m interested! What should I do to apply?

Sincerely,
The QuarkNet Coding Fellows and Teaching & Learning Fellows
(Peter Apps, Tiffany Coke, Chris Dimenna, Gerry Gagnon, Jodi Hansen, Adam LaMee, & Jeremy Smith)

Agenda (1st session)

Mon June 21

Session 1

Zoom Link

(15 min) Welcome

  • introductions

  • student hat first, then teacher hat

 

(15 min) Norms discussion and activity (w/Adam)

 

(15 min) Our philosophy re:coding (w/Jodi)

 

BREAK

 

(15 min) Getting started

 

(3 hrs) Introductory Jupyter notebooks

Session 2

Zoom Link

(1.75 hr) Big datasets2_Projectile in air: the 100,000 brightest stars in the Milky Way

 

(15 min) All hands meeting

  • Daily feedback survey

  • Is the probability of getting 10 heads in 10 trials different from 10% chance each flip?

  • Graduate credit info

    • Link to USF Registration here. (scroll to the Fermilab list)

    • Download syllabus and Quarknet-specific task here. 

 

Tues June 22

Session 1

(30 min) All Hands meeting

  • Successes / challenges from yesterday’s notebooks

  • Other cool things discovered

    • data.head() ← what’s the significance of “data”

  • How to keep reinforcing norms throughout the year?

  • Groups are assigned their decay mode

    • Jim Deane    J/Psi --> uu

    • Carol Lund    J/Psi --> uu

    • Tracie Schroeder    J/Psi --> ee

    • Sundara Ghatty    J/Psi --> ee

    • Donna Martin    Y --> uu

    • Marteen Nolan    Y --> uu

    • Julia C Cook    Y --> ee

    • Jasun Burdick    Y --> ee

    • Michael Hirsh    Z --> uu

    • Dave Parent    Z --> uu

    • Brian Burcham    Z --> ee

    • Michael Cartwright    Z --> ee

  • Oregon State Physicists for Inclusion in Science shirts

 

(30 min) Particle Physics review (w/Jeremy)

 

(3 hrs) Big CMS dataset analysis

  • take breaks as needed

  • swap driver/navigator periodically

  • ask us for help if you get stuck

Session 2

(30 min) continue CMS analysis

 

(30 min) Guest: Katrina Miller, particle physics PhD student, AAAS Mass Media Fellow @ WIRED, and co-founder of iamstemproject.org

 

(40 min) Breakout Groups of 6 (by Decay Mode)

  • Finish any last-minute tasks with partner group

  • Share and discuss results with other group assigned same decay mode

  • Discuss the follow-up questions

 

(10 min) All Hands Meeting

 

Wed June 23

Session 1

(30 min) All Hands

  • Thoughts from yesterday

  • CMS 3D printed models on Thingiverse here

  • CERN S’cool lab and their library of 3D printed models

 

(30 min) Dr. Kati Lassila-Perini, leads the CMS data preservation and open access project OpenData

 

(30 min) Breakout Groups of 6 (by Decay Mode)

  • Finish any last-minute tasks with partner group

  • Share and discuss results with other group assigned same decay mode

  • Discuss the follow-up questions

 

(30 min) All Hands

 

(1 hr) Preliminary data investigation

Session 2

(15 min) Start to generate Teacher Hat ideas

 

(1.5 hrs) Teacher Hat work time

 

(5 min) Daily feedback survey

 

Thurs June 24

Session 1

(0.5 hrs) Guest: Dr. Talat Rahman, Professor and Computational Physicist at Univ of Central Florida

 

(1 hrs) All Hands

 

(2 hrs) Teacher Hat working time

Session 2

(30 min) Guest: Dr. Renata Rawlings-Goss, Biophysicist and Executive Director of the NSF South Big Data Hub

 

(1.5 hrs) Teacher Hat mode

 

(5 min) Daily feedback survey

 

Fri June 25

Session 1

(15 min) All Hands

  • Thoughts from yesterday 

  • Invite to next week’s speakers

  • Ideas for optional breakouts later:

    • GitHub (w/Adam)

    • analyzing student-collected data & Google Sheets (w/Adam)

    • other physics coding resources (w/Chris & Adam)

    • more particle physics Q&A (w/Jeremy)

 

(1 hr) Continue working on implementation plans

 

(20-30 min) Quarknet Accounting

 

(1.5 hr) Continue working on implementation plan

  • 30 min optional - various tips & tricks from Adam

 

(10 min) All Hands

Session 2

(40 min) Share plans for implementation in groups of 4

  • 5 minutes of each camper “Driving” one notebook; 5 minutes of feedback/questions

  • Briefly decide upon ONE activity (of the four) that you want to “showcase” to the whole group

  • listen and watch as a student might, and author can write # comments/feedback into the notebook
     

Brian Burcham: notebook and plan

Carol Lund: Notebook, Plan

Dave Parent: notebook and plan

Donna Martin

JaSun Burdick

Jim Deane

Julia Cook: notebook and plan

Marteen Nolan

Michael Cartwright

Michael Hirsh

Sundara Ghatty

Tracie Schroeder

 

(45 min) Showcase to the whole group

  • The three Showcasers will screen share, briefly summarize lesson, and mention some of the feedback received during the small group session

 

Here’s the group photo for your scrapbook

Jim’s recommendation: The Friendly Orange Glow

 

PearDeck - Three month free trial code?

               - Three month free trial code from Aug 2020?

PearDeck - Professional Development link

Post-Camp To Do List

Resources

Learning to code

Data Science

Physics

Colab Techniques

Agenda (2nd session)

Mon June 28

Session 1

Zoom Link

(30 min) Welcome

 

(30 min) Norms discussion and activity (w/Adam)

 

(15 min) Our philosophy re:coding (w/Chris)

 

BREAK

 

(3 hrs) Driver/navigator time

Session 2

(30 min) Guest: Sergei Gleyzer, physics prof. @ U of Alabama & machine learning @ CMS, sgleyzer@ua.edu

 

(30 min) Big datasets: the 100,000 brightest stars in the Milky Way

  • go until :45 after the hour

 

(30 min) Particle Physics review (w/Tiffany)

 

(15 min) All hands meeting

  • Google can be the best programming help

  • Daily feedback survey

  • Graduate credit info

    • Link to USF Registration here. (scroll to the Fermilab list)

    • Download syllabus and Quarknet-specific task here. 

 

Tues June 29

Session 1

(30 min) All Hands meeting

  • Successes / challenges from yesterday’s notebooks

  • How to keep reinforcing norms throughout the year?

    • Driver/navigator → share the air

  • Other cool things discovered

    • data.head() ← what’s the significance of “data”

  • (10 min) Take a 2nd look at the muon mass activity

  • Groups are assigned their decay mode

 

(3 hrs) Big CMS dataset analysis

  • take breaks as needed

  • swap driver/navigator periodically

  • ask us for help if you get stuck

  • Groups

    • J/Psi→ ee

      • Nicole, Paul

    • J/Psi→ uu

      • Shira & Robert

    • Y→ ee

      • Vance, Karin, Janice

    • Y → uu

      • Amy & Stephanie

    • Z→ uu

      • Joel, Allen, John

Session 2

(30 min) All hands

  • Take a look at each group’s mass plot

  • What cuts did you make? Why?

  • HEP questions

 

(30 min) Guest: Farrah Simpson, PhD student @ Brown working on CMS (Brown spotlight, LinkedIn)

 

(50 min) CMS analysis working time

 

(10 min) All Hands Meeting

 

Wed June 30

Session 1

(30 min) All Hands

 

(30 min) Breakout Groups of 6

  • Finish any last-minute tasks with partner group

  • Briefly share and discuss your group’s results

  • Discuss the follow-up questions

 

(30 min) All Hands

 

(2? hr) Preliminary data investigation

Session 2

(30 min) Guest: Cindy Joe, Engineering Physicist at Fermilab

 

(15 min) Start to generate Teacher Hat ideas

 

(1 hr) Teacher Hat work time

 

(5 min) Daily feedback survey

 

Thurs July 1

Session 1

(1 hr) All Hands

  • Thoughts from yesterday

  • Introduce your pets

  • BlackInPhysics.org and the essay series in Physics Today we all should read

  • Each teacher shares their work from yesterday (3-5 min each)

    • Amy Tursi

    • Robert Hesman

    • Janice Valletta

    • Joel M May

    • John S Pisanic Jr.

    • Karin Foss

    • Nicole DeVito

    • Paul Koziel

    • Allen Sears: fire & weather study

    • Shira Eliaser

    • Stephanie Metz-Miller

    • Vance J. Nannini

 

(3 hrs) Teacher Hat working time

 

Sometime this session, check/update your Quarknet.org profile

  • Ken’s how-to guide for updating

  • forgot your password? Go to login page, then upper right “request a new password”

  • Can't login but you’re pretty sure you have a profile? Email Shane at swood5@nd.edu

  • Don’t have a profile on Quarknet.org? Request a profile

Session 2

(30 min) Guest: Dave Austin, UCF Computational Physics PhD student

 

(1.5 hrs) Teacher Hat mode

 

(5 min) Daily feedback survey

 

Fri July 2

Session 1

(45 min) All Hands

  • Thoughts from yesterday 

  • recap norms

  • group photo later this AM

  • Ideas for optional breakouts later

 

(45 min) Continue working on implementation plans

 

(30 min) Guest: Dr. Kaitlin Rassmussen, exoplanet postdoc @ U Mich

 

(10 sec) Group photo

 

(20-30 min) Quarknet Accounting

  • Attendance sign-in

  • Teacher survey

    • If you’ve done one already in 2019 or 2020, here’s the short survey (5-6 min)

    • If you haven’t done the long Quarknet survey in a few years, here’s the long one (15-20 min)

 

(1.5 hr) Continue working on implementation plan

  • optional break sessions:

    • HEP questions

    • Is downloading Jupyter and using GitHub worth it?

    • entry points

    • learning more python

 

(9 min 50 sec) All Hands

  • One of my lessons includes NGSS citing and explaining redshift, cmb and composition of matter....I'd like to know how other teachers might include particles for the composition of matter?

  • Colab Survival Guide

Session 2

(40 min) Share plans for implementation in groups of 4

 

Attendance sheet (so you can get paid)

 

(45 min) Showcase to the whole group

  • The three Showcasers will screen share, briefly summarize lesson, and mention some of the feedback received during the small group session

 

PearDeck - Three month free trial code?

               - Three month free trial code from Aug 2020?

PearDeck - Professional Development link

 

Post-Camp To Do List

  • Adam with email about: Money, grad credit, fame, fortune: TBA

Resources

Learning to code

Data Science

Physics

Colab Techniques

Workshop Goals

  1. Review and reteach core concepts of particle physics, such as the framework of the Standard Model, the anatomy of a particle accelerator and detector, and the methods for calculating invariant mass from 4-vector data.

  2. Review and apply basic aspects of computer programming in Python, such as conditionals, math functions and plotting, and file manipulation.

  3. Use simple programming tools to analyze large datasets generated from the CMS experiment in the 2010 and 2011 runs, and run analyses of these data. Generate conclusions about these analyses that include both calculations and plots (e.g. of invariant or transverse mass).

  4. Search for new scientific datasets available online and write code to perform analyses of these new data.

  5. Design a series of code-centered activities that either add onto existing units in a high school physics course, or replace an already existing activity; create a plan for implementation of these activities.

QuarkNet Enduring Understandings

  1. Claims are made based on data that constitute the evidence for the claim.

  2. Particle physicists use conservation of energy and momentum to discover the mass of fundamental particles.

  3. Indirect evidence provides data to study phenomena that cannot be directly observed.

  4. Scientists continuously check the performance of their instruments by performing calibration runs, using particles with well-known characteristics.

  5. Data can be analyzed more effectively when properly organized; charts and histograms provide methods of finding patterns in large data sets.

  6. Data can be used to develop models based on patterns in the data.

  7. Physicists use models to make predictions about and explain natural phenomena.

  8. Particle decays are probabilistic for any one particle.

  9. Physicists must identify and subtract “noisy” background events in order to identify the “signal.”

  10. Well-understood particle properties such as charge, mass, and spin provide data to calibrate detectors.

  11. The Standard Model provides a framework for our understanding of matter.

  12. Research questions, experiments and models are formed and refined by observed patterns in large data sets.