Friday Flyer - September 30, 2016
Spotlight on the University of Kansas QuarkNet Center: Located in Lawrence, the center hosted both a research program for high school students and a teacher workshop this summer. Eight teachers participated a LIGO e-Lab workshop held on campus on June 6-7. During the workshop, teachers heard a talk from Hume Feldman on gravitational waves and LIGO, assembled table-top interferometers, took a virtual tour of the LIGO facility in Hanford, Washington, explored the LIGO e-Lab and discussed classroom implementation. Thirteen high school students participated in summer research, focusing on a variety of topics: CMS data simulations, radio detection of lightning, cosmic ray detectors, and development of a game, "Quarked!" (www.quarked.org). The student experience included a field trip to Chicago, where students toured Fermilab and other sites around the city. Phil Baringer and Dave Besson are both mentors at KU, with Jim Deane as the research teacher.
News from QuarkNet Central: International Cosmic Day will be here before you know it. Be sure to get those cosmic ray detectors up and running and register here. We also provide a poster to help you announce this opportunity to your students. There will be some improvements made on the e-Labs site (http://www.i2u2.org/) over the weekend; expect the site to be offline 12 AM - 1 AM EDT on Saturday, October 1 (that's overnight Friday).
Physics Experiment Roundup: Construction of the LZ (LUX-ZEPLIN) dark matter detector moves forward. This next-generation detector will be at least 100 times more sensitive than its predecessor and is scheduled to become operational in 2020.
Resources: Check out this short video by Nobel Laureate Art McDonald as he describes neutrino oscillation and detection. If you received the October 2016 edition of The Physics Teacher, you may have noticed "Ripples in Reality," an article by Fermilab's Don Lincoln and LIGO's Amber Stuver on gravitational waves, LIGO, and the "chirps" that announced the first measurements of gravitational waves. The Perimeter Institute will host a lecture, "As We Enter the Quantum Era" by Michele Mosca, on the evening of Wednesday, October 5. Sign up for the live webcast of this lecture, and watch without having to travel to Waterloo!
Just for Fun: Injection: A method of delivering a vaccine, or the transfer of particles from one accelerator to another? This symmetry article gives several examples of "physics slang," or words that have a specific meaning in the context of physics that may be different than in everyday life. With the arrival of autumn, leaves will soon be changing colors across much of the country. Impress your friends with your knowledge of leaf color chemistry with the help of this guide thanks to compoundchem.com!
QuarkNet Staff:
Mark Adams: adams@fnal.gov
Ken Cecire: kcecire@nd.edu
Shane Wood: swood5@nd.edu