LHC Physics in the Classroom @ AAPT WM24

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Submitted by ShaneWood on Tue, 01/02/2024 - 09:09
Special Projects

AAPT WM 2024 Workshop: LHC Physics in the Classroom

Saturday, 6 January, 2024 8:00 AM - 1:00 PM CT

New Orleans, LA

Churchill B1 - 2nd Floor

Small URL for this page: http://tinyurl.com/lhcaapt24 (Back-up page: http://tinyurl.com/lhcaapt24alt)

Agenda

Time (CT) Activity
8:00 AM

  Greetings and introductions - SW

  • 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? 
  • Setting the stage: Big to small
~8:15 AM

    Activity: Shuffling the Particle Deck - KC
     What are the elementary particles that make up the Standard Model?
~8:45 AM

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

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

~10:00 AM

   BREAK
~10:10 AM

  World Wide Data Day measurement
     Muons used in a calibration measurement at the LHC.  
~11:30 AM

  Discussion & Evaluation

  • Tour of QuarkNet.org and Data Actvities Portfolio
  • What are your ideas for implementation?   
  • Workshop evaluation - AAPT
12:00 PM

 

  End of workshop

 

 

Contacts

Shane Wood, QuarkNet National Staff
Ken Cecire, QuarkNet National Staff
 

 

AAPT Program information:

Organizer: Shane Wood
Date: January 6, 2024
Time: 8:00 AM - 12:00 PM 
Location: Churchill B1 - 2nd Floor

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!