Friday Flyer - October 28, 2016

Spotlight on the University of Minnesota QuarkNet Center: During Summer 2016, the annual workshop was divided into two parts: a three-day cosmic ray studies workshop in June and two days in August studying neutrinos and the NOvA experiment. Martin Shaffer led the group through the cosmic workshop where participants assembled a detector, became more familiar with EQUIP, and performed several cosmic ray studies, including one on time of flight. Minnesota physicist Ken Heller led most of the activity during the two-day NOvA workshop in August. Ken gave a talk on the NOvA experiment, prepared teachers for a tour of the far detector, and spoke on problem solving in physics; a topic on which Ken's Physics Education Research Group has focused for several years. The teachers drove the nearly four hours up to a small resort near Ash River, Minnesota (near the NOvA far detector) to stay overnight in order to tour the NOvA far detector on day two. There's nothing quite like a road trip with a bunch of physics teachers!

 

News from QuarkNet Central: A reminder that International Cosmic Day is next Wednesday, November 2. Registration for Masterclasses 2017 opened last week; get more information from this registration notice

 

Physics Experiment Roundup: See how CERN's CLOUD experiment relates to climate research. Learn more about "taming the firehose" of CMS's data stream as a recent paper highlights the detector's triggering system.

Using the QuarkNet website: New feature! Do you wonder how to find a center group in the QuarkNet site? Here's how.

Resources: Learn more about gravitational-wave detectors in this primer from symmetry

Just for Fun: Break out the big box of crayons 'cause it's time to get coloring; check out the ATLAS coloring book recently released by the experiment. Have any taffy in that collection of Halloween candy? Learn about some of the math involved in building the ultimate taffy machine.

Mark Adams: adams@fnal.gov
Ken Cecire: kcecire@nd.edu
Shane Wood: swood5@nd.edu