QuarkNet an der Elbe: Laufzettel Settled

kcecire's picture
Submitted by kcecire on Fri, 10/24/2014 - 05:08

This week I crossed off the last item on my Laufzettel, the routing slip for new staff. That item was for me to be introduced in the Institute. It was taken care of by our All Hands Meeting of the ATLAS and Outreach groups this past Monday. Michael Kobel, who is the Director of IKTP and the godfather of International Masterclasses and my sponsor here, introduced me briefly to set the stage for my 20 minute presentation on who I am and what I do. Following the QuarkNet style, I not only talked but also gave everyone a brief activity based on the ILC workshops we did in Japan last June. All hands looked at printed ILC event simulations* and characterized Higgs decays from them. One of the first questions at the end of the talk was about the result of the ILC exercise. My first action after the meeting was to hand in my Laufzettel.

My work with the Netzwerk Teilchenwelt cosmic ray detector continues. The rate seems to vary on the counters: it is mostly in the recommended (for these counters) 6-8 Hz range but sometimes dips down to 1-2 Hz. Not blessable. I'd earlier gotten a tip from the DESY Zeuthen people that the NT counters, being solid state devices, were rather sensitive to temperature variations, so I decided to separate the counters to allow more exposure to the air and thus, hopefully, stabilize the temperatute and the count rate. I used what we have plenty of in the Institute: coffee cups.

Our ILC result, set on the table outside the break room. I think some of that last "andere" group were H → τ τ events.

Here are the coffee-cup-separated counters. They've made a bit of a conversation piece for visitors to the office.

 

This was also the week to work on the Masterclass Library for 2015 and it is just about ready. It is subject to some revision but you can have a sneak peek at http://tinyurl.com/mc15lib. 

Speaking of masterclasses, registration for videoconference spots is still on until November 10. You can find links to the Doodles in the above-mentioned Library at "Videoconferences" on the project map.

 

*According to Department of Temporal Investigations rules, actual ILC data will be unavailble until at least 2028.