Friday Flyer - February 26, 2021

Submitted by ShaneWood on Sun, 02/14/2021 - 11:54

A reminder that the Friday Flyer now comes out every other week. Look for the next flyer on March 12.

Spotlight on the New Nu Fellows, a.k.a. the Neutrino Fellows

QuarkNet fellows are teacher leaders within the QuarkNet Collaboration who work with staff as "force multipliers" for engagement with the centers and their teachers. Among many tasks, they help develop and test new activities for the Data Activities Portfolio, plan and facilitate teacher workshops, and serve as a sounding board for staff regarding student, teacher, and classroom realities. As of last month, we have five fellows groups: Coding (new), Cosmic Ray, LHC (formerly LHC-Neutrino), Neutrino (new), and Teaching & Learning. Today, we introduce the neutrino fellows. Excitement is building world-wide as construction of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) brings us closer to a new era in neutrino research. The neutrino fellows look forward to sharing this excitement with you and your students.

Top row (left to right): Helen Coyle (Rutgers), Shane Wood (staff), Paul Sedita (Rochester, NY)
Bottom row (left to right): Spencer Pasero (staff), Michael Plucinski (Minnesota), Rebekah Randall (Notre Dame)

News from QuarkNet Central

Attention center leads: Staff will be sending out an e-mail with a link to the 2021 RFP form. Please watch for that e-mail within the next week or so, then have one person (mentor or lead teacher) complete the form.

International Muon Week (IMW) will take place in March, and you and your students can participate even if you don't have access to a cosmic ray detector! Staff will collect data during the week of March 8–12, and the following week (March 15–19) participants can use this data to discuss results and ask questions via Zoom. Here's the updated 2021 IMW registration form that contains more information about IMW. If you have questions, contact Mark.

Masterclass season is here! Check out the latest IMC circulars, including one from last Friday, and one from today.

QuarkNet Educational Discussions (QED) continue to meet as we head toward spring. This past Wednesday, Ken Olum of the Tufts Institute of Technology answered many questions about cosmic strings and gravitational waves. Mark your calendar for our next meeting scheduled for March 10.

Beamline for Schools 2021 is on! Get basic information and a registration link in the announcement, and find more resources at the Useful Documents page.

INSPYRE (INternational School on modern PhYsics and REsearch) will host a series of lectures online on April 12–16, 2021. Registration is now open.

Physics Experiment Roundup

From symmetry, an article on the search for Higgs boson twins, or two Higgs bosons that form from a single collision. A report from ATLAS with an update on the search for physics beyond the Standard Model. Sometimes a little coffee, or Coffea, is needed to speed up the analysis of the huge amounts of data produced at the LHC.

From Fermilab News, "one minute" Q&A sessions with accelerator electronics technician Roshanda Spillers and accelerator physicist Arden Warner.

Resources

From Minute Physics, a nice video that explains general relativity at seven levels of difficulty (H/T Marge Bardeen). Five DIY physics demonstrations from symmetry and the Lederman Science Center. In the second episode of Even Bananas, Fermilab scientist Kirsty Duffy attempts to explain neutrinos in under 60 seconds.

Our very own Mark Adams recently produced a video that demonstrates how to measure the speed of cosmic ray muons using QuarkNet detector counters and a digital oscilloscope. Check it out! Also on the cosmic ray front: Auger Observatory has decided to share 10% of their data collected through 2018 (H/T Dave Hoppert).

NASA honors "Hidden Figure" Mary W. Jackson by officially naming its headquarters building after this first African American female engineer at NASA.