Data Activities Portfolio
The Data Portfolio is a compendium of particle physics classroom activities organized by data strand and level of student engagement. Follow the links provided for information about using the Data Portfolio to plan your students’ experience. Level descriptions explain the data analysis skills that students apply at each level: tasks in Level 0 are simpler than those in Levels 1 and 2. While each level can be explored individually, students who start in one level and progress to more complex levels experience increasingly engaging and challenging tasks. These activities are aligned with NGSS Standards, particularly NGSS Practices.
Your students can follow a path through activities in a data strand to better understand practices that lead to discovery. Each pathway provides connections between topics routinely covered in physics class and particle physics content and methods. Use the pulldown menus (Curriculum Topics and Strand) to find activities related to the content you are currently covering. Watch this screencast to learn more about sorting these activities.
| Activity Name | Data Strand | Level | Curriculum Topics | NGSS Practices |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Cosmic Ray e-LabStudents experience the excitement of scientific collaboration in this series of investigations into high-energy cosmic rays. |
Cosmic Ray | Level 3 | Instrumentation, Nature of Matter, Skill: Histograms, Skill: Uncertainty | 1, 3, 4, 6 |
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Mean Lifetime Part 3: MINERvA Students collect data from muons which decay in the MINERvA detector in the Fermilab NuMi beamline to understand particle decay and determine the muon lifetime. |
Cosmic Ray, Neutrino | Level 2 | Half-Life/Mean Lifetime, Kinematics, Nature of Matter, Skill: Histograms, Skill: Uncertainty | 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 |
 Cosmic Rays and the SunStudents search for a specific data file in the Cosmic Ray e-Lab and look for evidence of the passage of the sun in the flux measurements derived from this file. |
Cosmic Ray | Level 2 | Instrumentation, Nature of Matter, Skill: Histograms, Skill: Uncertainty | 3, 4, 6, 7 |
 Mean Lifetime Part 2: Cosmic MuonsStudents learn how physicists measure muon lifetime. |
Cosmic Ray | Level 2 | Half-Life/Mean Lifetime, Nature of Matter, Special Relativity, Skill: Histograms, Skill: Uncertainty | 2, 3, 4, 5 |
 Signal and Noise: Cosmic MuonsIn this introductory tutorial that, students learn about how to distinguish muon signals from background and instrumental noise. |
Cosmic Ray | Level 1 | Instrumentation, Skill: Histograms, Skill: Uncertainty | 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 |
 Mean Lifetime Part 1: DiceRolling dice serves as the model for decaying particles. |
Cosmic Ray, LHC | Level 1 | Half-Life/Mean Lifetime, Skill: Developing Models, Skill: Histograms | 4, 5 |
 Rolling with RutherfordStudents use statistics to make an indirect measurement they can easily confirm. |
Cosmic Ray, LHC | Level 1 | Nature of Matter, Skill: Developing Models, Skill: Histograms, Skill: Uncertainty | 1, 3, 4, 7 |
 Histograms: UncertaintyStudents construct histograms, identify the best value to represent the data, and report the uncertainty in their answers. |
Cosmic Ray, LHC, Neutrino | Level 1 | Skill: Developing Models, Skill: Histograms, Skill: Uncertainty | 4, 5 |
 Energy, Momentum, and MassStudents examine data to find how energy, momentum, and mass are related. |
Cosmic Ray, LHC, Neutrino | Level 1 | Conservation Laws, Special Relativity, Skill: Graphing | 2, 4, 5, 7 |
 Calculate the Top Quark MassStudents use conservation laws and vector addition to calculate the top mass from event displays. |
Cosmic Ray, LHC | Level 1 | Conservation Laws, Special Relativity, Standard Model, Skill: Uncertainty | 1, 4, 5, 7 |