Johns Hopkins University QuarkNet Center
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified)
on Friday, September 13, 2013 - 09:05
Description
Welcome to the Johns Hopkins University QuarkNet center. We meet on the campus of JHU and serve teachers in the surrounding area.
Particle physics history from Morris Swartz
EQUIP for use with CRMDs
Neutron talk by Kevin Martz from Monday, July 20
Link for Perimeter Institute
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
CMS@JHU
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.
Tuesday 21 July09:00 Coffee, Registration, and Daily Opener 09:15 Introduction/Objectives/Overview/Data Porfolio 09:30 Presentation: CMS and LHC Run II 10:30 Break 10:45 Level 1 Data Portfolio Activities: 11:45 Reflection on Activities 12:00 Lunch 13:00 Level 1 Data Portfolio Activities: Each group chooses one. 14:00 Break 14:15 Level 2 Data Portfolio Activity: 15:30 Reflections on Activities and Discussion 16:00 End of Day |
Wednesday 22 July09:00 Coffee/Recap of Yesterday/Plan for Today 09:15 Level 2 Data Portfolio Activitiy: CMS Masterclass Introduction 10:00 CMS Virtual Visit 10:30 Level 2 Data Portfolio Activitiy: CMS Masterclass Measurement 11:30 Reflection on Activity and Discussion 12:00 Lunch 13:00 Level 3 Data Portfolio Activitiy Exploration: CMS e-Lab 14:00 Reflection on Activity and Discussion 14:15 Break 14:30 Implementation plans (form) 15:15 Reports and Discussion 16:00 Evaluation and Close
|
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
Thursday 23 July0:900 Registration and Coffee 09:15 Intro discussion 09:30 Physicist presentation on LHC and detectors 10:30 e-Lab first look
12:00 lunch 13:00 TOTEM Data Express 14:30 Z mass plot in e-Lab (start at metro map)
16:00 End of day |
Friday 24 July09:00 Coffee and chat 09:15 Intro redux 09:30 Discussion and creation of research questions
10:00 Group work: investigations, posters
12:00 lunch 13:00 Finalize posters 13:30 Present posters 14:30 Discussion:
15:30 Implementation Survey 16:00 End of workshop |
FYI
Resources |
Contacts |
2014 Annual Report - JHU
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.
- 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
- 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
JHU Abstract 2014-Antimatter: History, Theory, Detection, and Potential Applications
Antimatter: History, Theory, Detection, and Potential Applications
Shaina Furman (Towson High School), Sylvie Hullinger (Towson High School), James Miller (Towson High School), Jeremy Smith (Hereford High School), Tyler Bradley (Towson High School) , Dr. Morris Swartz (Johns Hopkins University)
The subject of antimatter provides an intriguing field in which physicist can study both the origins of the universe as we know it and research potential medical benefits of exotic particles. Research into potential matter-antimatter asymmetries could shed light on the first few moments after the Big Bang, when matter became a dominant form of mass in the universe and antimatter mysteriously disappeared. This asymmetry, called Charge Parity (CP) violation, would explain why we are able to exist as ordinary matter and why the universe doesn’t consist of a primordial soup of radiation. CP violation can be described in terms of quark mixing probabilities in the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix. Various experiments, including ALPHA and Babar, work to uncover the properties of antimatter that cause CP violation. Antimatter research also has more earthly applications; currently, Positron Emission Tomography (PET) can be used to accurately identify cancerous cells within the body by detecting the high-energy photons that are emitted during electron- positron annihilation. In addition, antiprotons can be fired into tissue in order to irradiate cancerous cells in a precise volume while causing minimal damage to the surrounding healthy tissues. Unfortunately, the cost of antimatter severely limits the development of these processes; currently, one gram of antimatter costs 100 trillion dollars to produce.
JHU Abstract 2014-The Cosmic Microwave Background
The Cosmic Microwave Background
Michael Mistretta (Hereford High School), Jeremy Smith (Hereford High School), Tyler Bradley (Towson High School), Dr. Morris Swartz (Johns Hopkins University)
My research was focused on learning more about the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the information about the early stages of the universe which it contains. I read through various publications regarding the CMB including those from COBE, WMAP, PLANCK, and BICEP-2 to understand what kind of information that can be gained from analyzing the CMB and how these researchers are using these data to refine various theories about the behavior of our universe. The CMB is the afterglow of the Big Bang, it is essentially a snapshot of the universe as it was immediately following the Big Bang and can provide key insight into how the universe became what it is today. Its discovery alone was predicted in the early 60’s by the early Big Bang theories, and once it was discovered it became the smoking gun for the Big Bang theory. NASA’s COBE satellite later found that temperature of the light emitted from the CMB was, although astonishingly uniform, anisotropic to one part in one hundred thousand. COBE was then followed by more advanced telescopes such as WMAP and PLANCK which measured these anisotropies with much more precision. Researchers believe that these slight temperature variations could be a result of density perturbations in the early universe. Recent discovery of b-mode polarization in the radiation emitted by the CMB, as detected by BICEP-2, is believed to be evidence of gravitational waves in the very early stages of the universe, which could potentially provide insight for a refined theory of Cosmic Inflation. Research of the CMB is essential to understanding various aspects of our universe such as inflation, how galaxies and other celestial bodies were formed, and unlocking some of the mysteries of dark matter and energy.
JHU Abstract 2014-Searching for the Origins of Cosmic Rays
Searching for the Origins of Cosmic Rays
Anthony Fedorchak (Marriotts Ridge High School), Jeremy Smith (Hereford High School), Tyler Bradley (Towson High School), Dr. Morris Swartz (Johns Hopkins University)
The purpose of my research was to investigate the currently accepted source of cosmic rays, and then to branch out and make predictions as to other possible sources of cosmic rays based on the characteristics of the identified source. My research was primarily focused around a scientific journal published in early 2013 that pertained to data taken from the Fermi telescope, NASA’s telescope that is focused on analyzing high energy sources in space. This publication contained information about the processes used to identify Supernovae Remnants, namely IC 443 and W44, as sources of cosmic rays. After accessing this, I analyzed the energy levels of output of Pulsars, Active Galactic Nuclei, and the Sun, in order to try and hypothesize possible additional sources of cosmic rays, since all 3 of these bodies contain characteristics similar to Supernovae Remnants. Gamma ray energy levels were used to identify Supernovae Remnants as sources of cosmic rays through looking at the gamma rays born from a very specific type of neutral-pion decay, a type of decay specific to cosmic ray collisions. I then found interest in the effects that cosmic rays have here on Earth. I found information attributing 15% of the yearly exposure of radiation to cosmic rays, and also found that one end result of cosmic ray collisions within Earth’s atmosphere is the production of Carbon 14, which is central to the process of carbon dating. I continued my research, looking into the effects that cosmic rays can have on electrical equipment on, or in orbit around, Earth. I’ll continue looking into other effects that cosmic rays have here on Earth, and try to obtain a deeper understanding of the processes that generate these cosmic rays.