---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Monday 25 July  

9:00-10:00 Introduction to QuarkNet (Jeremy Smith, Hereford HS)

--------------------------------------------------

10:00-11:00 Special Relativity in a LIGO Context  (Dr. Bruce Barnett, JHU)

--------------------------------------------------

11:00-12:00 Resonances ("Bumps") at the LHC (Dr. Andrei Gritsan, JHU) 

--------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tuesday 29 July

9:00-10:00

General Relativity in a LIGO Context  (Dr. Bruce Barnett, JHU)

--------------------------------------------------

10:00-11:00

Did LIGO Detect Dark Matter? (Dr. Marc Kamionkowski, JHU)

(link to paper on arXiv)

(link to primary author Simeon Bird's talk at STScI on 20 July 2016)

(youtube videos: laser interferometer basics; publicity video from original discovery; second discovery including "chirp" sound of the merger!)

--------------------------------------------------

11:00-12:00 

Accelerator Physics (Dr. Morris Swartz, JHU)

Some youtube videos: the one that Morris showed; a slightly longer one with more details)

--------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wednesday 30 July

9:00-10:00 Modeling the Frictional Force (Dr. Mark Robbins, JHU)

Link to online version of a 2005 talk at Kitt Peak

Webcast of a Public talk at Kitt Peak

--------------------------------------------------

10:00-11:00 ISE Workshop in Greece; or, "My Quarknet Junket." (Mr. John Pisanic, Damascus HS)

--------------------------------------------------

11:00-12:00 The Role of Muon Lifetime (updated) in the Standard Model Dr. Morris Swartz, JHU)

Andrei Gritsan gave a talk about Higgs stuff 2 years ago; talks more about "metastable universe" and Higgs potential stuff.

--------------------------------------------------

 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thursday 31 July

9:00-10:00 Summer Students: Summary of Research 

Click here for their posters (PDF) and summary abstracts.

(Hereford HS: Jack, Kyle)

(Richard Montgomery HS: Tatiana, Simon, Jason, Isabelle)

--------------------------------------------------

10:00-11:00

Radio Astronomy in the classroom (Kevin Martz, Richard Montgomery HS)

Histograms in the classroom (Jeremy Smith, Hereford HS)

--------------------------------------------------

11:00-12:00 Nanotechnology (Dr. Joan Hoffmann, APL) (link pending Dr. Hoffmann's approval)

--------------------------------------------------

Miscellanea

Rick Dower provided a parts list for the interferometer he showed us yesterday. (Word Docx)

He also has an activity for showing diffraction patterns from a spring, to show similarity to DNA X-ray diffraction pattern!

Tim Durkin has a worksheet he uses with the Powers of Ten videos/animations (Word Doc)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Friday 1 August

9:00-10:00 Status of the CLASS experiment (Dr. Joseph Eimer, JHU)

Bonus: What does the word "flat" mean in cosmology? (Physicsgirl on YouTube)

Bonuss: Watch our "map" of the cosmic microwave background improve in resolution from COBE to WMAP to Planck. (YouTube)

--------------------------------------------------

10:00-11:00 Brightly Shining Black Holes (Dr. Julian Krolik, JHU)

Bonus: Watch some animations of the stars orbiting the Milky Way's center!

Bonuss: Dr. Krolik and his team's NASA -published simulation of a black hole accretion disk

--------------------------------------------------

11:00-12:00 M83 Supernova Remnants (Dr. Bill Blair)

Bonus: Dr. Blair's 2010 talk about the survey (PPT); another by his colleague Knox Long (PDF)

Bonuss: Dr. Blair's "How Big is a Billion?" talk

Here is a link to download SAOImage DS9, a free software package for viewing telescope images that has Chandra X-ray images pre-loaded into it. And here is the Chandra Education page that explains how to use it. Main Chandra Ed page here has lots more!

--------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Click here for the agenda and list of talks for the day.

Click here for the summer student research posters and abstracts.

QuarkNet Annual Report 2015

JHU Center

The JHU QuarkNet center had another successful year, involving both high school teachers and students in its activities.  The one-week teacher workshop took place from 20-24 July, and the six-week student internship ran from 30 June to 9 August.  We had several teachers from the JHU center use their cosmic ray muon detectors throughout the year, and our center also participated in the 2015 CMS Masterclass.

1. Teacher Workshop

During the first morning, teachers and students listened to a variety of talks from professors from the Physics & Astronomy department of JHU, as well as a talk from co-lead teacher Kevin Martz. A list of talks, with links, follows:

Dr. Morris Swartz - History of Particle Physics Discoveries

Mr. Kevin Martz - Neutron Diffraction Physics

Dr. Andrei Gristan - Matter in Space & Time 

For the rest of the week, teachers participated in two QuarkNet-hosted workshops: the CMS Data Workshop and the CMS e-lab. Both of these workshops entailed using real data from the LHC CMS experiment to infer properties about particles produced in the proton-proton collisions. See here for a link to the agenda for the week's activities.

In both of the workshops, teachers took advantage of the resources available in the QuarkNet Data Portfolio, an ever-growing set of student-centered activities and curricular resources that are intended to help teachers incorporate particle physics concepts into their classrooms.

2. Student Research
    

9 students (4 from Damascus HS; 5 from Hereford HS) participated in a 6-week summer research internship beginning on 29 June and running to 7 August.  After a short series of introductory activities, students were set loose to pursue research topics of their own choosing.  Alongside this theoretical research, students also designed and conducted experiments with the QuarkNet muon detectors: one group attempted to determine a correlation between muon flux and time of day; another group attempted to determine the mean lifetime of the muon once brought to rest inside the scintillating material.

See our Drupal page for a list of topics, the research abstracts, and PDFs of the summary posters:

Posters:/document/research-posters-2015

The wave-particle duality activity that we did on Monday afternoon was from the Perimeter Institute. Not all materials are available for free on the web, but please investigate their website.

www.perimeterinstitute.ca

July 21-24, 2015

Tiny URL for this page: http://tinyurl.com/qn-cms-jhu15.

CMS Data Workshop

Objectives

Participating teachers will:

• Apply classical physics principles to reduce or explain the observations in data investigations.
• Identify and describe ways that data are organized for determining any patterns that may exist in the data.
• Create, organize and interpret data plots; make claims based on evidence and provide explanations; identify data limitations.
• Develop a plan for taking students from their current level of data use to subsequent levels using activities and/or ideas from the workshop.

We will also provide opportunities to engage in critical dialogue among teaching colleagues about what they learn in the workshop.

Draft Agenda

Times and specific activities are subject to adjustment.

CMS e-Lab Workshop

Objectives

Workshop participants will:

• Identify particles colliding and emerging from collisions at the LHC from CMS data.
• Interpret the physical meaning of plots created from CMS data in light of conservation rules (energy, momentum, charge).
• Ask and answer questions about the physics of high energy collisions using CMS data. 

Agenda

FYI

QuarkNet Annual Report 2014

JHU Center

The JHU QuarkNet center had another successful summer, involving both high school teachers and students in its activities.  The one-week teacher workshop took place from 28 July to 1 August, and the six-week student internship ran from 30 July to 9 August.

1. Teacher Workshop

During the mornings, teachers and students listened to a variety of talks from professors and graduate students from the Physics & Astronomy department of JHU.  See our Drupal site for details and links: /document/list-talks .  Subjects included:

• Particle Physics
  • Mr. J. Smith – Introduction to, and History of, Particle Physics
  • Dr. A. Gritsan  - What is Higgs? A person, a field, a particle, a theory?
  • Dr. P. Maksimovic – The Standard Model and Particle Detectors
  • Dr. J. Kaplan – Higgs and electroweak symmetry breaking Q&A
  • Dr. M. Swartz – The Photoelectric Effect
  • Mr. Kevin Martz – My CERN Summer Vacation
• Astrophysics & Cosmology
  • Dr. J. Krolik – Black Holes
  • Dr. M. Kamionkowski – Cosmic Microwave Background & B-mode Polarization
  • Dr.  T. Essinger-Hileman – The CLASS CMB Polarization Experiment
• Education & Diversity
  • Dr.  R. Leheny – Active Learning in Introductory Physics Education
  • Ms. A. Sady – Diversity Challenges in Physics

In the afternoons, teachers concentrated on designing, constructing and testing a device for quantitative measurement of the photoelectric effect.  See our Drupal page for details: /content/afternoon-activity-2014-workshop-photoelectric-effect-leds

2. Student Research
    

Approximately 11 students (4 from Towson HS, 4 paid and 3 unpaid from Hereford HS) participated in a 6-week summer research internship beginning on 30 July and running to 9 August.After a short series of introductory activities, students were set loose to pursue research topics of their own choosing.Alongside this theoretical research, students also designed and conducted experiments with the QuarkNet muon detector: one group attempted to determine a correlation between muon flux and time of day; another group attempted to determine the mean lifetime of the muon once brought to rest inside the scintillating material.

See our Drupal page for a list of topics, the research abstracts, and PDFs of the summary posters:

Topics: /document/2014-summer-research-abstracts

Posters:/document/2014-jhu-summer-research-list-topics-posters