QuarkNet @ KITP: Particle Physics in the Classroom
Friday, 7 February, 2025 9:00 AM - 4:30 PM PT
UC Santa Barbara, CA
Small URL for this page: https://tinyurl.com/QNatKITP
Agenda
| Time (PT) | Activity |
|---|
| 9:00 AM | Greetings and introductions (Shane) |
| 9:30 AM | Activity: Shuffling the Particle Deck (Ken)
Explore the elementary particles that make up the Standard Model. |
| 10:00 AM | Activity: Rolling with Rutherford (Spencer)
Using indirect evidence to "see" the invisible. |
10:45 AM | BREAK |
| 11:00 AM | Activity: Calculate the Z Mass - (Shane)
Use conservation laws (energy/momentum) to calculate the mass of a particle. |
12:00 PM | LUNCH (provided) & TOURS |
| 1:15 PM | Activity: World Wide Data Day measurement - (Ken)
Use muons in a calibration measurement at the LHC. |
2:30 PM | BREAK |
| 2:45 PM | Activity: Explore Cosmic Ray Muon Detectors (All)
What can we learn from cosmic ray muons? - What are cosmic rays? Slides
- Cosmic Watches - Run experiments
- Cosmic Ray Muon Detectors - Run experiments
- Cosmic Ray e-Lab
|
| 4:00 PM | Closing Discussion |
| 4:30 PM | End of workshop - Return to hotel |
Contacts
- Ken Cecire (kcecire@nd.edu), QuarkNet National Staff, University of Notre Dame
- Spencer Pasero (spasero@fnal.gov), QuarkNet National Staff, Fermilab
- Shane Wood (swood5@nd.edu), QuarkNet National Staff, Mounds View Schools/Unversity of Notre Dame
Workshop description:
Students who complete an introductory physics course may be under the impression that physics somehow “stopped” in the late 19th or early 20th century. Of course this idea could not be further from the truth, as physicists today continue to work on addressing an ever-growing list of unsolved questions: Where has all the antimatter gone? What is dark matter? What is dark energy? (What questions have we not thought of yet?) Physicists from all over the world work to address these and many other questions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, on the border of Switzerland and France. This workshop will focus on how teachers can tap into the excitement of LHC physics to both motivate students and provide a contemporary context for them to engage with topics and practices covered in introductory physics courses, including (but not limited to) conservation laws, data collection, organization, and analysis, and making claims based on evidence. Participants in this workshop will alternate between “student mode” and “teacher mode”, will analyze authentic LHC data, and will get a chance to work through some activities from QuarkNet’s Data Activities Portfolio. Participants will also be introduced to two different cosmic ray muon detection systems and will collect muon data to analyze in quick experiments. The workshop will conclude with a discussion on classroom implementation. Some of the activities will be computer-based, so please bring along a laptop!
