Friday Flyer - September 11, 2015

Spotlight on the New Academic Year: The Friday Flyer is back for 2015-2016! QuarkNet is developing at an increased pace this year, so watch this space to keep up with the news. Among the events already scheduled are International Cosmic Day on November 5, 2015 and International Masterclasses from February 11 to March 24, 2016. And trust us, there will be plenty more to be announced.

One new feature this year is of importance to those who teach in the International Baccalaureate program: IB Physics now has particle physics included in its core curriculum. QuarkNet responds: let's form a group of QuarkNet teachers of IB Physics to see what we can do support student learning in this new context. If you'd like to join a QuarkNet IB group, please fill out this Interest Form.

News from QuarkNet Central: You will recall that Shane Wood joined the QuarkNet staff last spring and that Jeremy Smith has taken on some staff functions as well. The changes are not finished: watch this space in the coming weeks.

News from an der Elbe: Cosmic ray physics meets LHC physics in the Bachelor's thesis written by Joshua Unger of TU Dresden on production of Higgs bosons in the atmosphere. 

Physics Experiment Roundup: Going east to west . . . Over at CERN, ATLAS and CMS team up to give us the most precise measurements yet of properties of the Higgs. At Brookhaven Lab on Long Island, RHIC is making droplets of quark-gluon plasma. Want to see nice muon tracks? Well, the MicroBooNe neutrino experiment at Fermilab turned on its Time Projection Chamber in August and it lit up with cosmic rays. Take a look! On that other coast, SLAC physicists are hard at work on new accelerator technology. 

Resources: Also at CERN, the LHCb experiment seems to have found the elusive pentaquark; watch as Don Lincoln explains pentaquarks. In another video, Don does a nice job of explaining statistics in physics.

Just for Fun: The Saturn V launch vehicle (it is rocket science) made way too simple

In Remembrance: Fourteen years ago today

QuarkNet Staff Teachers:
Ken Cecire: kcecire@nd.edu
Bob Peterson: rspete@fnal.gov
Shane Wood: swood5@nd.edu