Friday Flyer - March 8, 2024
Spotlight on the Virginia QuarkNet Center
The Virginia QuarkNet Center extends through central and southeast Virginia and even includes some teachers from farther afield. The group is active and growing. They had a successful CMS masterclass last March and are on track for another this year—in two weeks!—with more than twice as many students. That growth is due to new, active teachers from Hampton Roads who came to the summer workshop and stayed involved. Lead Teachers Mike Fetsko and Maria Niland did an effective job recruiting for the summer workshop at William and Mary. Long-time member Hank Horn added to the excitement in Small Hall by building cloud chambers for the workshop participants. Mentor Josh Erlich gave some great talks as well. Teachers returned for a one-day follow-up in October and then jumped into World Wide Data Day in November. The activity and enthusiasm levels are looking good for Virginia QuarkNet!
News from QuarkNet Central
International Masterclasses: We are now fully into masterclass season! So far, so good. Want to find your videoconference day and time or even try to schedule a last-minute masterclass? Check out the Fermilab masterclass videoconference schedule. Want more masterclass information? Read the IMC circulars, found in the Organisation page of the IMC website.
If you have a masterclass set, there is still time for a masterclass orientation. These are designed to help mentors, tutors, and teachers learn about the masterclass measurement they will facilitate, as well as the nuts and bolts of running a masterclass. Inquire with Shane, Spencer, or Ken and schedule it at a time convenient for your group.
Beamline for Schools 2024: The Beamline for Schools (BL4S) 2024 competition is open for high school teams to compete for the chance to perform an experiment at CERN or DESY. Learn more: Read the announcement from CERN!
International Muon Week 2024: Measure cosmic ray rates around the world during International Muon Week April 1-12, 2024. This is an opportunity for you and your students to see if the muon rate changes during the total solar eclipse in North America on April 8. Find out more information on this IMW 2024 website, including details on how to become involved and to register.
Data Camp and Coding Camp: We are once again planning some exciting camps for this summer to take you to the next level in QuarkNet. This year, Data Camp is open to QuarkNet teachers by application rather than mentor nomination as we have done previously. Watch this space for applications and news!
Physics Experiment Roundup
Things are cooking at CERN. We learn from CERN Bulletin that CMS might use AI to search for Higgs partners, and that there is a new experiment, AEgIS, that will use a beam of positronium to study antimatter. Spoiler: positronium is a bound state of an electron and a positron. (There is also a pro-version article in Physics Review Letters.) Also from CERN:a new b-decay has been found at LHCb and CMS measures sound in the QGP. Meanwhile, at Fermilab, we learn from Fermilab News that SBND will soon observe neutrinos and that electron beams can sterilize medical equipement.
Resources
We have a bit of a potpourri of resources in this issue. Let's start with a four-part podcast on dark matter. Read about it in Symmetry or go straight to Particle Mysteries: The Coldest Case in Interactions. CERN70 is another series, with three science history articles so far. It celebrates the 70th anniversary of CERN this year. Want to read more? Well, Physics Today has its most-read articles of 2023 all in one place. Going to AAPT this summer? Don Lincoln will receive the Klopsteg Memorial Lecture Award. It is always fun when Don gives a talk! And, finally, H/T to fellow Rebekah Randall for sharing a new quantum physics program, QuanTime.
Just for Fun
CERN Bulletin announced Valentine's poetry contest last month and it must have worked because they were able to pick a winning entry. Read the poetry! Oh, wait: that is the English language winner. There is a winning French poem too: share it with the French faculty at your school!
So we were inspired here a FF and the crack writing staff toiled for way too much time and finally came up with a Valentine to Fermilab:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Fermilab studies neutrinos
And has bison too.
Given the "quality" of that, we thought we'd best turn it over to ChatGPT to generate some haiku:
Particles collide,
In Fermilab's quest for truth,
Love for science blooms.
That was pretty good. How about the LHC?
Beneath Earth's surface,
LHC probes the secrets hid,
Love for science thrives.
Thanks Generative AI!
Did we mention that CERN has a robodog? CERN Bulletin did. They are so cool.
Nerds that we are, let's end with a graph, courtesy of xkcd.
QuarkNet Staff
Mark Adams: adams@fnal.gov
Ken Cecire: kcecire@nd.edu
Spencer Pasero: spasero@fnal.gov
Shane Wood: swood5@nd.edu