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.

Sample pathways provide a progression of activities to help students better understand practices that lead to discovery. Each sample pathway is matched to a particular data strand and a particular skill set.

Activity Name Data Strand Level NGSS Practices Topic
ALICE Masterclass

Students search for strange particles, produced from collisions at LHC and recorded by the ALICE experiment.

 LHC Level 2 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Data Analysis
ATLAS Z-path Masterclass

Students are physicists for a day at a university or lab where they work with physiists to how to analyze real particle physics data in the form of event displays.

 

 LHC Level 2 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Data Analysis
TOTEM Data Express

Use quantum physics and LHC data to estimate the size of the proton.

 LHC Level 2 4, 5, 8 Data Analysis, Measurement, Momentum Conservation, Other
CMS Data Express

CMS Data Express is a short investigation in which students inspect and characterize W or Z events from the LHC.

 LHC Level 2 4, 5, 8 Data Analysis, Measurement, Momentum Conservation, Motion of Charged Particles
Cosmic Rays and the Sun

Students 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 3, 4, 6, 7 Data Analysis, Measurement, Student data
Plotting LHC Discovery

Students explore features of mass plots of a well-understood particle and apply what they have learned to plots from new discoveries.

 LHC Level 2 4, 6, 7 Data Analysis, Momentum Conservation
LHCb Masterclass

Students measure the D0 lifetime using data from LHCb, separating signal from backgrounds.

 LHC Level 2 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Data Analysis
CMS e-Lab

Students have an opportunity to learn how to analyze data to calibrate the CMS detector and participate in discovery science (as particle physicists do).

 LHC Level 3 1, 3, 4, 6 Data Analysis
Cosmic Ray e-Lab

Students experience the excitement of scientific collaboration in this series of investigations into high-energy cosmic rays.

 Cosmic Ray Level 3 1, 3, 4, 6 Data Analysis