KSU Annual Report 2023

Kansas State University QuarkNet Center, 2022-2023 Annual Report

The K-State group held a Master Class (and Master Class Orientation), and four CRMD Zoom sessions, and teachers went on a three-day summer trip, in the last fiscal year.

In addition, we are also coordinating a research project with QuarkNet Fellow Jim Deane that involves our dozen CRMD teachers working with their students to correlate muon rates with atmospheric temperature and pressure changes (available from NASA) as weather fronts move through Kansas and Arkansas. 

The Master Class Orientation was held on March 4, 2023 and was attended by 8 teachers.

The Master Class was held on March 31, 2023 and was attended by 6 teachers and their students. KSU Physics hosted a talk on HEP, CERN, CMS.

Three teachers participated in the three-day summer on June 5-7 2023, to NCAR, NIST, in Boulder, CO, and to a two-day NREL workshop at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, CO. Teachers said they greatly enjoyed and benefited from this trip.  

On average 3-4 CRMD teachers attend the Zoom meetings. 

On other fronts, KSU QuarkNet teachers continued to avail themselves of national QuarkNet and other HEP-related opportunities seeded by QuarkNet.

The KSU group remains strong in its twentieth year of existence. Approximately two and half dozen teachers participate, a core group of a dozen or so regularly, and the rest at the rate of once every other meeting.  We continue to specialize in serving small rural high schools throughout the state of Kansas and have now started to get some high school teachers from Kansas City, MO, as well as one from Arkansas. Plans for 2023-2024 include hour-long Zoom meetings for CRMD teachers, an early spring 2024 Master Class orientation workshop, participation in a Master Class in late spring 2024 and a summer 2024 teacher workshop or trip (given the funding situation).