LHC Physics in the Classroom @ AAPT SM23

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Submitted by ShaneWood on Sat, 07/15/2023 - 10:58
Special Projects

AAPT SM 2023 Workshop: LHC Physics in the Classroom

Sunday 16 July, 2023 1:00 - 5:00 PM PT

Sacramento, CA

Ballroom A06

Small URL for this page: https://tinyurl.com/lhcaapt23

Agenda

Time (PT) Activity
1:00 PM

  Greetings and introductions

  • Whip around for introductions
    • Name 
    • Where are you from?
    • Institution and role
    • What are you hoping to get out of this workshop?
       
  • What is QuarkNet? 
~1:15 PM

  Setting the stage: Big to small

  Activity: Shuffling the Particle Deck 
     What are the elementary particles that make up the Standard Model?
~1:45 PM

  Activity: Rolling with Rutherford
     Using indirect evidence to "see" the invisible. 

  Activity: Calculate the Z Mass 
     Using conservation laws (energy/momentum) to calculate the mass of a particle.

~3:00 PM

   BREAK
~3:15 PM

  World Wide Data Day measurement
     Muons used in a calibration measurement at the LHC.  
~4:30 PM

  Discussion & Evaluation

  • Tour of QuarkNet.org and Data Actvities Portfolio
  • What are your ideas for implementation?   
  • Workshop evaluation - AAPT
5:00 PM

 

  End of workshop

 

 

Contacts

Shane Wood, QuarkNet National Staff
 

 

AAPT Program information:

Organizer: Shane Wood
Date: July 16, 2023
Time: 1:00 to 5:00 PM 
Location: Ballroom A06

Students who complete an introductory physics course may be under the impression that physics somehow “stopped” in the late 19th or early 20th century. Of course this idea could not be further from the truth, as physicists today continue to work on addressing an ever-growing list of unsolved questions: Where has all the antimatter gone? What is dark matter? What is dark energy? (What questions have we not thought of yet?) Physicists from all over the world work to address these and many other questions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, on the border of Switzerland and France. This workshop will focus on how teachers can tap into the excitement of LHC physics to both motivate students and provide a contemporary context for them to engage with topics and practices covered in introductory physics courses, including (but not limited to) conservation laws, data collection, organization, and analysis, and making claims based on evidence. Participants in this workshop will alternate between “student mode” and “teacher mode”, will analyze authentic LHC data, and will get a chance to work through some activities from QuarkNet’s Data Activities Portfolio. The workshop will conclude with a discussion on classroom implementation. Some of the activities will be computer-based, so please bring along a laptop!