Data Portfolio Activities

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
CMS Masterclass WZH-path

Students are physicists for a day at a university or lab where they work with physicists to learn 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, Momentum Conservation
Mean Lifetime Part II: Cosmic Muons

Students learn how physicists measure muon lifetime.

 Cosmic Ray Level 2 2, 3, 4, 5 Data Analysis, Measurement, Particle Composition, Student data
ATLAS Data Express

ATLAS Data Express is a short investigation in which students inspect and characterize Z events in the LHC and distinguish muons from electrons.

 LHC Level 2 4, 5, 8 Data Analysis, Measurement, Momentum Conservation
ATLAS W-path Masterclass

Students are physicists for a day at a university or lab where they work with physicists 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
CMS Masterclass J/Psi

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

 LHC Level 2 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Data Analysis, Measurement, Momentum Conservation, Motion of Charged Particles, Particle Composition
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
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